Hard to Kill
by Downhillrabbit6
Summary: Opportunity is a hell of thing. It can be made, it can appear out of the blue, it can grow and be nurtured or be taken away in an instant. So when the Courier, his Eye-bot and a psycho companion fall into a world, clean, thriving and untouched by the cruel ravages of nuclear hell fire, nothing will stand in their way. Not a bunch of savages. Not an Empire... Not even a revolution.
1. Chapter 1

**So this is the first fic I am posting on this site. Been reading and writing for a short while now and I'd like to give a shot towards writing and finishing a fic. Quick thing to know the story begins 10 years before the events of Akame Ga Kill, though all the characters you know and love will be brought in later chapters. Lets get this started...**

Hard to Kill

Chapter 1: Young Guns

" _You got lives in you, hard to kill. Storm, bullets, sand and wind, yet you still walk…"_

 _-Ulysses_

xxxxXXxxxx

" _Daddy, where is mommy?" …. "Busy? What does mommy do to be so busy?"….. "Ranger? What's that?" ….. "So she's a hero?" … "Cool! I wanna be like mommy! I wanna save people too!" … "No! Daddy's job is boring and two heads are smelly!" ….. "AHH, no daddy, hahahaha! Ahh that tickles" ... "I love you too daddy!"_

* * *

xxxxxx

"Hnnnurrgh, *Gasp* Huuaaaa! Ahhhh! Ughhhh! *Huff*Huff*"

The sound of ragged breaths roughly frayed against the quiet and calm of the serene morning background. An armored humanoid figure sat up from its prone position on a splotch of scorched earth; an unnatural ashen scar in the otherwise unmarred green forest. The figure wore a thick steel chest plate chemically infused with a smorgasbord of several other of lightweight nano-composite metals and materials (yes, including titanium and aluminum). The rapid respiration of the figure identified it as male and showcased that the armor of the torso was in fact separated into several segments across the figures sternum and diaphragm. This was all connected by a skin tight body glove making the hardened chest armor not only durable, but flexible. Across the sleek gunmetal gray chest armor and around the man's waist were multiple leather bandoliers and belts holding all sorts of conventional munitions.

The figure, still hacking, rolled over from their rear and onto their knees to pull the helmeted gas mask from their head, revealing a head of shaggy black hair. Bloodshot brown eyes frantically searched their immediate surroundings taking in the thick trunks of the trees surrounding the clearing and the lush green leaves decorating their branches.

The persons thin brow furrowed and calloused fingers felt at the downy cushion of grass, wet with dew from the morning mist. A sturdy roman nose flared slightly, taking in the smell of the crisp untainted air. A strong masculine jaw, narrow with youth, worked itself shut as its owner finally evened out his breathing.

"What …the… What… is…!?" *huff* He glanced around. "What is this? Where am I?" The gruff voice did not match the face of the young man. His features set his age physically between the years of 14 and 16. But the touch of grey to sections of his unruly mop and the grim look in his eye spoke of a person who had seen too much too soon.

They spoke of a person who had done too much, too soon.

Someone who had been pushed to the brink, but come back stronger than before. A survivor. His name was Guerra Lincoln Pratt. The Black Walker of the Wastes, Best and Last Hope for Humanity. The Messenger of Death. Bringer of Life.

He was also a legitimate mailman.

' _How did… I end up in Zion? Whatever, first things…first, I gotta get… a hold of myself. Where are my guns?'_

The young man staggered to his feet and slowly looked around the clearing taking in the sight of all the life around him, while searching for anything he may have dropped. About one foot to his left and resting quietly outside of its sleeve was his custom riot shotgun, "Charger". The boom stick was a monster of a CQC weapon. It fired 8 gauge instead of 12 gauge; It had an additional barrel, and an extra drum magazine to match, along with a vertical grip to compensate for recoil, and a full choke to tighten the spread and increase the effective range of the buckshot.

Giving it a quick once over, he turned the two barreled shotgun on a nearby tree and pulled the trigger six times in rapid succession, the echoing booms of the weapon awoke the whole forest as the giant plant became yet another one of the Courier many victims.

The tree was absolutely ravaged.

The focused wave of lead had torn a massive gouge the size of a child's torso out of the side of its trunk. It groaned under the stress of attempting to keep upright, before a series of snaps and cracks signified the end of its very short battle with gravity as it toppled over crashing to the forest floor. It was safe to say the weapon was fully functional.

Satisfied Guerra put the safety on, returned the weapon to its sleeve and strapped the sleeve to one of the bandoliers around his waist, letting it rest against the small of his back. Resting snug in its holster on his left thigh was "Maria" the exotically engraved 9mm once owned by man named Benny. The man who had shot him twice in the head and left him for dead, buried alive in a shallow grave. In hindsight he probably enjoyed crushing the man's skull against the Presidential suite floor a bit too much. The stains never came out.

On his right thigh was an old N99 officer's personal defense weapon, widely known across the wasteland as the venerable 10mm pistol. It was an inherited gift, and one of his many belongings that he cherished the most. Unlike its other brethren, it was still a viable option in a gunfight, being reliable, powerful and surprisingly accurate for such a worn weapon. Etched along the receiver was the name _"Whiskey Rose"_.

Tucked away within one of the many folds of his trenchcoat was a special revolver gifted to him by one of the larger factions of the Mojave wasteland. The "Big Iron", was a modified .45-75 govt hunting revolver made especially for him the New California Republic. It was somewhat of a thank you to the sixth courier for not wiping them of the map with the stash of nuclear warheads hidden within the bowels of the Divide. Unlike the rare and renowned "Ranger Sequoia" hunting revolver that veteran rangers carried. It had a short slide rail allowing him to put a scope on weapon if he so wished. It also sported a six-shot cylinder, a smooth oak wood grip engraved with a black spade and calibrated to be set on a hair trigger.

He absolutely adored the weapon. It was beautiful, deadly and had just enough weight to it to let him know that it wasn't taking shit from anyone. He included.

' _Just like mother'_ , Guerra mused.

Hidden somewhat uncomfortably in his right boot was one of his few holdout weapons, a reliable ivory-handled .357 magnum. The jet black barrel frame and cylinder were decorated with gold etchings and designs so ornate even his vocabulary was at a loss of how to describe such a visual masterwork of a firearm. Along the ejector tube and engraved on a silver plate was the unique firearms name; "Lucky". The irony was not lost on him.

Sitting snug in a sheath high on one of his bandoliers and concealed by his black trench coat was a large foot long bowie knife. It honestly seemed rather underwhelming for a guy who carries enough munitions and small arms to supply a small army. Then Guerra removed the weapon from its sheath, revealing its thick, permanently tawny red blade to the eyes of its holder. This was "Blood Nap", a very big knife that had earned its name through bathing in the blood of VERY big number of people, creatures and abominations alike. It was a strong and extremely sharp tool that had earned itself a permanent spot in his inventory.

Scanning the bloodstained blade once more, he returned the knife to its sheath. Having fully regained his wits and his senses by this time, Guerra gave himself a much more thorough check over, testing joints, flexing and tensing tender muscle and looking for any especially dark bruising hinting at a broken bone.

"Everything's seems to be all right, but when I have the chance I need to make a much more detailed diagnostic of myself."

' _Do you have any idea whatcha wanna be when you grow up?'_

"Onto the next problem, where are my other guns?" He was equipped enough to defend himself, but simply being able to defend himself was not satisfactory, not at all. He considered his holdout weapons and sidearms to be his personal defense weapons. His other, _bigger,_ guns were his much more preferable options.

*Hmmmmzzzzzzzzttttttt*

A peculiar noise that seemed like a cross between a hum and a low buzz reached his ears, coming from behind the tree he shredded into two moments earlier. It was noise that had become very familiar during his travels in the wastes and at the moment was a pleasant sound to the ears. From behind the tree near the edge of the clearing, an orb of metal levitated towards him. Multiple antenna and small arrays dotted the top and bottom of the small robots battered metal hull and along its sides were numerous bumper stickers, license plates and tags, telling of the many locations it had visited during its journey.

This was ED-E or Eddie, the Eyebot Duraframe Model-E, the first, but as of recent, no longer the last of the enclave's most advance ED frame. The militarized version of the commercial eyebot, sporting a titanium outer casing, hardened E.M.P resistant operating systems and a focused plasma array with a particle exciter. He (Guerra identified Eddie as a male) was also one of the few beings who Guerra could call his best friends.

As ED-E stopped face to grill with Guerra and rubbed himself on his cheek, giving off high-pitched chirps all the while. Guerra rested a hand on ED-E and gave him a couple light pats of affection.

"Hey ED-E I'm happy to see you too. How are ya doin'?" 'Why does my voice sound different?'

ED-E chirped again and nudged Guerra's hand.

"What? You got something for me buddy?"

Instead of responding ED-E lowered himself to the ground and with a low buzz several various weapons atomitized into existence, constructing themselves out of millions of small white pixels/atoms. Goddamn, pre-war tech truly was amazing. This was one of the reasons he absolutely loved having ED-E around so much.

The first weapon was the "All-American" marksman carbine, a beast of a weapon that held a special place in his heart. The strength of the weapon wasn't what made it special; he had quite a few weapons with a much stronger punch. It was not its rate of fire, nor its substantial magazine size. It the carbine's amazing amount of versatility the weapon was capable. It could put down everything short of a Deathclaw, Radscorpion, or Yao Guai with a single well placed shot to the head. It had enough ammo to put down anything else with the remaining 24 or 23 rounds in the magazine. There was little recoil, and with a steady hand all 25/24 rounds would end up somewhere vital.

After looking over the carbine and making sure the weapon was in working order, Guerra flicked the safety on and strapped the carbine to one of the belts across the front of his chest. He turned to his next and at the moment his heaviest weapon and most deadly weapon. It was a two-barreled light machine gun, that he had appropriately named "The Spray". The unique LMG had been his on and off pet project for a whole three months shortly after he had finished making the "Charger"; the idea of two barreled weapons had been quite a hot topic on his mind. After piecing together to automatic receivers, modifying one of the actions and creating a custom grip connected to the top of the two receivers. Since he was pretty much firing two machine guns at once, the weapon had an abominable combined fire rate of 1800 rounds a minute and weighed much less than a mini-gun. Another interesting fact was that it utilized .308 rounds instead of the more manageable, easy to find and produce 5.56mm rounds. It gave the weapon just a bit more kick. He slung "The Spray" over his shoulder letting it hang against his back by its sling.

The next two weapons strengthened him in one of the areas he felt strongest in...

Hand-to-Hand.

In reality there had been very few people who had survived an encounter with Courier Six. But when it did happen, it was usually due to either something much more threatening taking hold of his attention, or when he used his fists. Now to be fair, Guerra could and did, beat a lot of people to death. It just always seemed that the ones who managed to get away (and eventually get claimed by the wasteland), were the ones he ended up 'killing' via his fists. That's why he enjoyed these two little trinkets so much; they gave his fists just a bit more… power.

On his right was the displacer glove "Pushy" a modified 'energy' version of the power fist. Instead of driving a pneumatically powered knuckle into the face of an unlucky shmuck, it instead collected and stored energy into a microfusion breeder into an energy cell that converted all stored energy into an electromagnetic charge.

Complicated indeed.

Then when needed, the energy is discharged to the front of the glove through an array creating a warp. The concussive force of such a weapon usually killed armored and unarmored targets in a single blow displacing their remains throughout the area. A regular displacer glove's warp had the kinetic energy necessary to kill or maim all targets within an 8-foot radius. "Pushy" was much different from other displacer gloves in that it had an excited energy cell and a microfusion hyperbreeder, producing a faster charge and much stronger warp capable of killing and mauling all within a 20-foot radius.

On his left was a very heavily modified and compact power fist, the "Greased Lightning". The weapon prior to modification had been a big, bulky, forearm length gauntlet with pneumatic jets built in along its length, allowing the user to punch with the force of a truck, with the speed of professional boxer. The issue with using power fists and displacer gloves is that they are so cumbersome and one-dimensional, that you can _only_ punch something when you have one on. Can't shoot a gun, can't operate any machinery, even hurling grenades was difficult enough.

Nonetheless, it was effective before and more so after a few other modifications he made during a short pit stop at the Big Mountain. He modified the power fist to operate on his left hand and made both the "Greased Lightning" and the "Pushy", slimmer, more dexterous and by rewiring some of the systems the weapon allowed him to still use firearms while he had them on.

It was as he attempted to put his overpowered displacer glove on his right wrist that he recognized yet another issue with his current situation.

' _Why does the glove feel so… loose?'_

"ED-E…" Guerra's voice cracked ever so slightly.

ED-E chirped gleefully, antennas and arrays bobbing up and down.

"Let me see everything else you've got." ED-E chirped twice before his armored sheet slid up, revealing a screen full of data and information. On the screen were a list of numerous items all organized under one of four categories: Apparel, Aid, Weapons, and Miscellaneous. But that wasn't what he was interested in at the moment.

What held his attention was the reflection of the young man on ED-E's screen. His face was handsome, slender but strong. Though it had a youthful charm to it, it was sculpted and shaped by a sort of… hardness. A plethora of small scars and burns decorated the face of the teen in the reflection; scars no one that young should have had. Those were _his_ scars; the problem, was that it wasn't _his_ face he was looking at.

That should have been _his_ face, the face of a grown, weathered, withered, beaten _old_ man. Guerra had lived for a long time, done many a thing, seen many a places and so he was unashamed of how …ripe he become due to the passage of time. Becoming old in the wasteland was a sign of someone who was clever, tough, or simply stubborn enough to survive its perils and dangers.

So… why, instead of seeing the face of someone who looked more wrinkled than their great-grandfathers ball-sack, was he instead looking at the face of a fucking kid who barely looked half a day out of puberty?!

Dismissing ED-E, Guerra brought up his left arm to look through his bracer-like Personal Information Processor or PIP-Boy. It was in here that he would find out what was going on with him; whether if he had somehow gone back 100+ years in time or if maybe just his body had physically reverted back. Maybe he had finally just gone senile. The Pip-boy would tell.

'All right let's see here… Items are all accounted for; Stats are all the same; Data… local map...'

…

'World Map?'

…

'Where am I?'

…

No seriously where in the actual fuck, was he?

Taking into account the trees, rich soil, grass, and morning dew he obviously wasn't in the Mojave. The sky was never this blue and the air never this crisp. The oxygen was… fresh and earthy as if there had been a recent rain. The only place that came close to having this sort of thriving, untouched nature was Zion National Park in Utah.

'It reminds me of Zion.'

"But this _isn't_ Zion."

It was less of a question and more of a confirmation to himself. He had known in the back of his mind that this wasn't the beautiful home of the Dead Horses and Sorrows. Nowhere in Zion was there this much green on the ground, but only in Zion were there trees this big and this lush. Jacobstown back in the Mojave had many trees, but they were smaller and much more skeletal.

Vault 22 also came to mind, but he had made sure to personally purge every element of Vault 22 spores he had ever come across, whether it be in the Mojave, Zion or the Big Mt. That just brought up another set of questions however. No vegetation that he had ever seen or found, that was caused by Vault 22 influence had ever developed woody stems like the trees surrounding him.

Also, another couple of issues were that over the course of his lifetime, Guerra had mapped _all_ of the Mojave, _all_ of Zion, _all_ of Central North America, all of the Eastern Commonwealths, the Northwest, and a majority of the Southwest including San Francisco. His Pip-boy should have been able to identify his exact location anywhere in the Continental United States and even if he had been transported to another continent RobCo. satellites should have been able give him his location in relation to any of his other mapped locations. More importantly was the absolute 100% fact, that nowhere on the planet Earth was there _no background radiation_.

' _This is why I don't do 'favors' for the brains anymore! They could have tested that retarded ass transportalponder on something, anything else other than me and left me out of it. Hell, I would have gone and subdued a random lobotomite if they so asked. But noooooo, I'm a prime candidate simply because I'm an above average human being capable of higher function than your average lobotomite.'_

Guerra kept ranting to himself as he scooped his Elite Riot Helmet off of the ground.

' _If I had known they were going to ask me to be a guinea pig for something so radical and insane, I would have just sent Gray by himself. He can survive virtually fucking anything.'_

A theory then crept into the back of his mind; one that he had mixed feelings about. What if the Transportalponder had done more than just teleport him a few hundred yards or a few hundred miles? Klein had once said that the T.P.P did everything by the hundreds, and with their latest adjustments, the T.P.P could multiply upon its already improved distances by the hundreds. What if it had gone even further beyond the realms of his initial projections? What if he had been transported to another planet, no another dimension or reality entirely! The brains had theorized once in a blue moon about parallel universes, maybe this planet was a small part of one of them.

The Courier was enthralled by the many possibilities of this new world, the hope of another chance for the Mojave, the Capital Wastes and the Commonwealth. This could possibly be another chance for the human race to thrive with knowledge of the Old World, and the awareness to not make the mistakes of the Old World's people.

Thus with 10 minutes of internal discussion and more mumbling than a demented dog whisperer, Guerra satisfied most of his outstanding questions all except for one. It was a question that had hitchhiked along with his theory of interdimensional travel.

' _How do I get back?'_

" **ROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!** "

It came like the call of death itself, the ashen scar that marked his arrival shattered along with the surrounding earth as several, two story tall beasts rose from the earth.

The monsters were absolutely gigantic.

He could only compare them in size to a mirelurk queen or behemoth. They almost looked like hunched bipedal armadillos, but had a large reptilian jaw with a beaked maw instead of teeth. Angry red eyes bore a sharp contrast to the dull brown of their carapace, and thick blunt claws glimmered in the few streams of sunlight breaking through the canopy. The creatures all growled, glaring down at the small human who had dared to intrude into their territory. They tossed their narrow heads back in unison and released a series of guttural roars in a show of dominance. The calls echoed all throughout the forest, shaking the very earth and scaring lesser and greater danger beasts alike away from the forest clearing. No sane person or danger beast would willingly engage a whole pack of enraged Earth Dragons.

Guerra stared for a moment.

Then a moment longer.

Blood.

He quivered slightly.

So **much** blood.

Guerra smirked.

 _Their_ blood.

Courier six smiled.

More blood. More blood!

The Black Walker gave a _crazed grin_.

 _BLOO_ _ **OOOD**_ _MOOORE_ _ **BLOOOOO**_ _OOOOOOOOOOO_ _ **OOOO**_ _D MOOOOORRREEE_

The young man slid the skull-like Elite Riot helmet over his head and the red fiber optics of the gas mask lit up. He tightened "pushy" on his right fist, and drew the "Big Iron" from its holster.

ED-E doing the appropriate thing to set the mood played a short sample of patriotic music as he charged his excited plasma arrays.

The Monster of the West charged.

A cacophony of gunshots, explosions and roars of pain occupied the forest for the last hour of the morning. Silence persisted for the rest of the eve.

* * *

xxxxx

… _Father, wh-….I apologize fa-…Lord Caesar, I just wanted to ask a question if I may Lord Caesar…T-Thank you Lord Caesar. I was finishing my turn in the arena today and ... And I noticed that the defeated boys, my age and older, all went to their birthmothers to have their arms set and their wounds treated… Y-Yes I broke their arms like you taught me to… Y-Yes, th-thank you Lord Caesar…Wh-Where…Where is my birthmother…_

Even before Gray fully awoke from his trauma induced slumber he was already inthe motion to pin the other unfamiliar presence in the room. His left hand zoned in on the throat of the person intruding into his personal space. There was a low gurgle as Gray's victim lost their next breath, beneath the force of his vicious one-handed grip. Unthinking he brought his right hand up, thumb rigid and ready to crush the trachea of the struggling person, ignoring the small weak hand tugging at his stiff arm.

' _KILL_ '

And so he moved to do so … before a fist snapped across his cheek and he suddenly got a generous sample of the taste and rather smooth texture of the sandy dirt floor.

Dirt Floor. He could tell by how even the ground felt and the lack of a breeze suggesting that he was indoors, inside some sort of structure; primitive, if the dirt floors told him anything.

'Fuck! That punch hurt!' But it lifted the murderous haze that had smothered his mind, even if it left him with a tender cheek. He had a good idea of who just decked him. His eyes slowly came into focus, losing their empty distant look. His ears twitched taking in the raspy sound of someone struggling for breath and a telling jingle jangle of bottle caps echoing through the hollow structure of the room.

' _Six.'_

But he wasn't sure. Something just didn't seem right.

The fist that hit him seemed too… small to be Guerra's. It also didn't have the amount of strength that one would normally associate with Courier Six. Guerra rarely held back and a punch filled with intent would have done a whole lot more than bruise his cheek. Then Gray became paranoid and a slew of possibilities filled his mind.

'A woman could have hands that size, but still be more than capable of doing damage; He himself had met (read: fought) plenty of raiders, Great Khans and even a few Fiends hopped up on psycho and buffout who sported tits and lacked balls, but had still hit him hard enough to leave some dark bruises and in some cases break bones. But not even the strongest of the men in the Mojave who took buffout like daily supplement pills, had the strength to knock him down, nevertheless the most dike'ish of the Wasteland's women.

'So it _could_ have been Guerra. But that still doesn't make sense; Guerra's a grown ass man.' And Gray was right, Courier Six was by all means and more, a fully grown man, an old man at that.

'Maybe it had something to do with the Brains and their retarded teleportation machine. Oh, speaking of which, I have to get Guerra to disable that pacification field bullshit, if we ever get back so I can butcher those levitating organs and feed them to a cyber dog or a nightstalker. Maybe even a lobotomite if I can't find one of the two.' He was off topic.

"Get up Gray. I know at least one thing that you are thinking so stop thinking it."

…

' _His voice sounds different.'_

…

"Gray."

…

"Graaaay."

…

"You could be using a voice modifier..." Gray answered, his eyes still closed and sprawled along the floor.

' _Why does my voice sound different?'_

"No one else knows who you are, not your face and especially not your name."

Conceding to logic Gray sat up, looking in the general direction of Guerra's voice. Sure enough there he was, leaning against a nearby wall. He was still fully garbed in his Elite Riot Gear, though his helmet was off and clipped at his waist. He limply shook his right hand as he pushed off the wall and walked towards his companion.

The cold brown of Six's eyes made contact with the dull grey of Five's. That was familiar to Gray. Everything else however was not… or was it.

Last time he had checked Courier 6 was a bitter 140-something year old man who had more wrinkles than a mole rat. The ice-cold glare that could freeze over hell, was still there, but everything else just left him doubtful and very confused. The person walking towards him was young, very young compared to the person he remembered. Though the L.A.P.D Pre-war riot chest armor was still fitting due to the body glove beneath it, the armored trenchcoat that Guerra wore over the armor was down to his ankles instead of his knees and was bunched up along the length of his arms. The armored cargo pants and the underlying lightweight plate armor that completed the Elite Riot Gear were very baggy and bunched up at his ankles.

Another glaring difference was that he had hair, a lot of hair in fact. The 145 year-old cyborg he had known for more than a century had lost most of his hair after he turned 113, he shaved what was left off shortly after and had embraced the chrome dome ever since. This child version of the Courier had an unruly mop of dull black, lacking any sort of gloss or luster. The neck length hair partially covered two small scars and one long scar ran horizontally along the length of his forehead.

He knew then that the adolescent in front of him was in fact Guerra, it was no coincidence that even though this person who was so young and who looked so… different than the person he knew, only _that_ person could have markings so unique, so familiar and so …detailed as the scars of his friend. Those scars were the identifying markings of Courier six something that no one could replicate. But why was he so young?!

It was only then that he recognized the tense silence between the two. Guerra just stared at him as if he was trying to decipher a password hidden in the coding of a wasteland computer's fragmented data banks. He reached out his right hand and braced his left leg and after a quick look of doubt, but without a word, Gray took the hand and was hauled to his feet.

Odd. A young teenager shouldn't have been strong enough to a pull a person of his size and weight to a standing position. Albeit this teenager was at one point strong enough to carry the at least 3% of the dead world's arsenal on his back. He looked Guerra in the eye. The tense atmosphere was still present. Something needed to be said.

"So have your balls dropped yet?"

* * *

 **Ok so I am excited to officially start my first fic, even though it is hidden away in kind of a dark corner. I am going to try and be relatively consistent with the fic and try to give updates at least once every three months. Life still exists and I don't want to hold myself to too stiff a standard and lie to those who ma come across this fic.**

 **If you liked the story please leave a review and tell me what I could do to keep on making it better. I am open to criticism as long as it is constructive. Thanks for your time.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hey guys, guess who's back? As it turned out it, the post date for this chapter was as I guessed it. I was hoping to get this out sometime in the middle of last month, but as it were, obligations with school and the upcoming graduation took priority. As soon as I recovered from the post graduation I focused on reviewing this chapter, writing out the next couple chapters, reading through the manga some more (which is exceptionally more messed up than the anime), and in general just getting this chapter out there in the best form it could have possibly be. Oh and Thaqif... I very much so appreciate enthusiasm and the many reviews and ideas you have given me. I would like it more if you made an actual account and Pm'd me instead of spamming my reviews. Not trying to be a jerk, I'm just asking kindly. Any way, here is what I have been holding in reserve for the last three months. Let's get this started...**

Hard to Kill

Chapter 2: The Last Few Weeks

" _Look around and see the ugly look on my face,_

 _you always come around- when my will is broken and I can barely stand on my two feet;_

 _Was it something, I said…"_

 _Sevendust –Burned Out_

xxxxXXxxxx

 _Andrew Washington Pratt was not in good shape. How bad of shape? Face down, leaking more red than a cracked wine bottle and further staining the chipped and moldy surface of the wooden panel floor. 'And to think I was going to replace those this weekend.'_

 _He had no one to blame but himself for his current situation. With two mistakes he had lost everything. His first mistake was to trust those greenhorn NCR conscripts to protect his livelihood. His second mistake was not keeping a round in the chamber of his old 10 mil. Precautions about having a loaded weapon around a young child were his reasons for such actions, but in a place such as the waste land it might have been worth the risk. Risk? What was he even saying? His son was a smart and cautious boy, who thought before he acted. He wasn't stupid enough to do something dumb like pick up his father's gun even with his childish fantasies of being a hero like Fantoma or Grognak, and he definitely wasn't stupid enough to point it at his own skull._

 _A slight haze began to cover the room floor and distort the dying mans vision. The unmistakable smell of smoke filled his nose with an odd mix of mesquite and radiation soaked hard wood. 'Fire…Good… he should know to stay away. He is a smart boy after all.' Andrew groaning through the pain, rolled over onto his back revealing the four dime sized holes on the right side of his abdomen. He head listed to the side, the last of his strength having faded from his body. He stared at a black and white picture resting on its side, the wooden frame cracked and glass shattered._

 _Through the haze slowly clouding his mind, he could see two figures standing side-by-side; The shorter figure appeared to be slightly more bulky and garbed in some sort of dark armor and overcoat, the other person wore simple civilians clothing. In the taller figures arms was a bundle of off-white. With the smoke and blood trickling into his eyes, he couldn't see their faces but he knew who they were. It was him, his wife and his son; only a week after giving birth and she was back in the black armor and back to work; she was such a strong individual. Times hadn't been great, but they were good and in the wasteland any good times, were memorable times._

 _The room began to fade to black as the toll of blood loss and irradiated smoke filling Andrew's lungs became too much for his body. 'So this is how it ends huh… killed in my own home and leaving my son a bastard.' His body began to quiver and shake as he fell into shock. 'Oh whatever god that there is above... Have mercy on my son.'_

" _DADDY?"_

' _My son!' Horror filled every part of his being as he heard the light pitter patter of small feet along the hollow floor and a moment later felt the frantic pats of his son diminutive hands along his torso and face._

" _DADDY!" Andrew's gaze shifted back up to the ceiling, his dull blue eyes looking into the panicked brown eyes of his son. His short black hair was plastered to his skull with sweat, most likely brought about by the heat. "Are you ok? What's wrong?" The boys' hands passed over the bullet wounds in his father's abdomen and he recoiled at the sticky feel of blood on his hands. "What is this red stuff?"_

 _Andrew suddenly much more aware, and yet still immobile, fought through the shock and worked up the effort to raise a hand to his sons chest and weakly push him away. "S-son… you need to leave… to go. N-now."_

 _The child's eyes already watering from the smoke began to run like a river as the truth of the situation began to dawn on him. "Noooo, daddy I don' want to leave you! Please daddy get up! I'll carry you j-just… just get up! Please!"_

 _Andrew exerted more force on his son. Blood beginning to pool at the corners of his mouth, struggling to keep his eyes open. "GUERRA! Don't try and be a hero!" Andrew hacked a glob of blood sharing space with the smoke in his lungs. His attempts to catch his breath were fruitless and he only succeeded in sucking in more of the irradiated smoke in the air, leading to more hacking. His voice was strained as he spoke again. You… need to go to the NCR… checkpoint a mile from here! Run… don't look back!"_

 _Guerra erratic and panicked out of his mind, pushed past his father's weak attempts to move him away and threw himself across the older man's chest sobbing and bawling. Andrew's hand fell on his back and he weakly stroked his back in an attempt to comfort his son._

" _I don't want to be a hero! I'll take care of the two heads, just please… get up…"_

 _Andrew couldn't respond anymore his breath was weak and his skin pale. Though his skin was becoming cold he could feel the heat in the room growing by the second, but what could he do? All he really could do was comfort and hold his son one last time._

" _Well, well, what do ya know? The farm rat is still scratching!"_

 _Andrew's heart rate accelerated. That was the voice of one of the fiends who did this to him. They should have left by now! They got what they wanted didn't they?_

" _Who're you?"_

' _No! Don't bring attention to yourself Guerra!'_

" _You, you did this to my Daddy! I'll hurt you, you bad person."_

 _Andrew could just visualize the man's sneering at his son._

" _And the farm rat has a farm mouse! It just gets better and better! Kids sell for quite a bit if you look in the right place. I bet I could get a whole fuck load of jet off your scrawny back! C'mere here you little shit!" Guerra was suddenly ripped from his arms and he heard his son scream in protest, "NOOOO, I don't want to, let me go you bad person!"_

 _Andrew's blood boiled as he heard the plot of the wasteland savage. That was his son! His pride and joy! That was his flesh and blood and there was no way he was going to lose him to some filthy brigand with a gun and bad intentions. His eyes regained some of their focus and his muscles tensed. 'I lost Julia! I'm not going to lose Guerra too!' He rolled onto his side and clasped a shaking hand around the ragged and cracked leather of the fiend's boot. Papa Bear was ready to defend his cub. "Get the fuck away from my son you piece of-"_

 _Not even five seconds into his fierce rebuttal against the kidnapping of his son, the fiend drew a homemade pipe pistol of wood and metal and discharged four .38 caliber rounds pointblank into the unarmored target at his feet. Andrew fell flat onto his back gurgling on the warm blood gushing from the new holes in his throat and jaw. He didn't even have the strength to attempt to stem the flow, futile as it may have been. Papa bear was dead._

" _NOOOOO! DAAADDYYY! HELP ME!"_

' _Guerra…' Was the last thought of Andrew Washington Pratt, as he watched his son get carried away, before the burning roof caved in._

* * *

xxxxxx

As soon as Gray began his sentence, Guerra, already in the works of mustering up one of the coldest glares possible, flipped his frown upside-fucking-down and gave the other man/teen an eerie smile. Gray was off his game, and had set himself up for what was coming. He was honestly surprised someone as perceptive as Courier Five hadn't noticed yet. Guess interdimensional travel would do that to a person.

"They have, in fact I got just a quite a bit of bass in my voice. However I am sure as hell that yours haven't, _squeaky_."

"What?" Gray's brow knotted in confusion. "What are you-", it was then as he attempted to defend his maturity as an elder that he felt his voice crack. His face twitched.

'My voice? Don't tell me…' It was not the gravely sardonic voice of a hardened man, but instead the scratchy, pitched voice of someone who talked too much and was just on the verge of growing hair on their unmentionables.

"Oh, oh naw. OH HELL NAW! FUUUU-"

Guerra blocked out the majority of his companions frothing anger and cursing as he fell into his own thoughts. He knew how Gray felt, and he understood him 100%; however he was less concerned with his lack of facial hair and more surprised that some of the synthetic parts of his reinforced spine had still been able to adjust and fit into his smaller frame. Just because his body had shrunken and de-aged, it didn't mean that his non-biological components would do the same. It would be like putting a sharp piece of metal inside a balloon and then shrinking that balloon very quickly. Replace the piece of metal with a saturnite-alloy supported spine and the water balloon with one Courier Six and… Guerra shivered as he thought of the rather gruesome results of that theory.

Maybe Gray was finished with his raging now.

"-UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"

Maybe not.

He turned his attention from the aggravated Gray to Courier Five's still recovering victim. It wouldn't do to have their host who had oh so kindly nurtured and cared for his companion to die. That would leave quite a bad taste in his mouth.

xxxxx

Shortly after Gray had finished his session of venting and gotten himself under control he had dressed himself in his nearby Desert Ranger Stalker Armor and leaned against a nearby wall, hood down and helmet off. The DRSA was a response to Guerra's off-hand comment that Gray's Desert Ranger Combat Armor was outdated and that he needed to ditch the old worn armor for something new. Now some people when given general advice such as, "You need something new" may just take the comment with a grain of salt and nod their heads to appease whoever may be talking. Some may honestly listen to the advice and make an effort to find or purchase something new. Gray however was stubborn man, so stubborn in fact that simply accepting advice from someone who he saw as his equal made him feel like he was losing out to his counterpart. Like he was lesser than him; 5 _is_ less than 6.

Also, who the fuck did he think he was?!

The DRCA was durable reliable, and they both were well versed in making repairs to L.A.P.D riot armor. Even more importantly it would be an affront to the Old Man Randall Clark A.K.A the Ghost of Zion, who had worn it before him and used it to protect the tribes of the National Park.

But Gray was also a (relatively) reasonable man, and he did recognize that his DRCA was starting to wear out on him and even with all the frequent repairs he shoved onto Guerra, he had begun to notice that he was feeling impacts from rounds just a little bit more. Scrapes and slashes from Mojave wildlife, were starting to catch and pull at his armor a lot more often. He recognized that it needed an overhaul. So to the Big Mountain he went and after 3 weeks of testing new concepts, pilfering and replicating the stealth suit 's calibrated systems, refitting the weave of the bodysuit stitched to the armor with some newer materials, threatening the brains in the Think Tank, adding some attachments, and finally injecting saturnite ceramic alloy into the armor making it 10 times more durable than the DCRA, the refit was finished and the newly christened DRSA was complete.

The most obvious of the changes were aesthetic. A dark brown hood was attached to his old ragged duster, leather belts holding a wide variety of throwing knives and smaller blades were strapped to his arms and additional bandoliers were wrapped around his chest. He had replaced the 2 century old, worn rodeo jeans and cowboy boots with much more efficient set of black loose-fitted, ranch jeans covered with saturnite shin, knee and thigh plating, and cloth wrapped steel-toed construction boots. A large satchel holding additional ammunition, explosives and medical supplies was strapped to his waist by a belt and rested against the small of his back.

Other upgrades weren't as obvious, like the spear hook attachment he had made for his Pip-Boy allowing him to easily move across terrain and in some cases pierce and pull same size or smaller targets towards him. His old DRCA helmet-gas mask had a new coating of saturnite alloy introduced along the inside the helmet (as to not deface the markings of his predecessors), a rebreather, and a range finder installed. Since the torso armor of the gear was injected with saturnite ceramic alloy it didn't look any different than before still showing several shallow gashes, dents and dull brown patches of rust and tarnish. Most importantly was the synthetic, weave that had replaced the old nylon used to hold the armor together. It was an innovation of Guerra's that functioned like textile power under armor.

It was a rather strange sight to see what equated to a 14-15 year-old teenager wearing something meant to fit a grown man.

But that wasn't what was bothering either of the two Couriers at the moment.

"What do you mean, "You don't know where we are", Six."

"I mean exactly what I said Gray. Don't play that game with me."

"What about your Pip-Boy? Did you check it? Is it giving you some semblance of our general location, cuz' mine isn't?!"

"I did check. I have checked almost a hundred times now and it insisted that there wasn't even a Robco Satellite broadcasting in this hemisphere."

"That's fucking impo-"

Guerra raised a hand to silence him, "After all the things we have seen and done, you don't get to say that anymore."

Gray's lips upturned into a tight sneer as he glared at Guerra… before sighing out and running a gloved hand through his shaggy head of dirty blond hair, pushing it back before letting it fall down over his eyes.

"Dammit man. Are you trying to tell me that we got teleported to another galaxy or some shit like that?"

Guerra lowered his hand and crossed his arms before continuing, "That is exactly what I am saying Grayson. The world we're in… it's alive, thriving even. From what I have been able to discern from the locals, the furthest anyone has been able to develop technologically are early concept repeating and automatic weapons. Do you know what that means?"

Gray's eyes flitted left to right in thought, before the answer suddenly came to him. "No radiation." Gray's eyes widened slightly as all the possibilities available in the new world came into perspective. "Holy Shit! No radiation! Guerra, do you know what that means?"

"I asked first, and I've already put some thought into all the potential that could come of untainted soil, an uncompromised atmosphere and a stable ecosys-"

"Shut the fuck up with the nerd talk! No radiation means clean water and clean water gives us the ability to brew some beer that won't wind up with either of us, primarily me, developing liver cancer after the first swig!" Gray's eyes swelled with false tears as he lifted his hand to his armored chest and stared off into a corner of the hut. "Oh I can see it now, a better tomorrow with better booze! So beautiful!"

Courier Six simply watched his companion's melodramatics. He had known Gray for a little more than a century and yet he still forgot sometimes just how ludicrous the cynical old (or would it technically be young) man could behave.

"R-rahdeeashun?"

A small coarse voice sounded out from behind Guerra.

Gray immediately stopped his overdramatic antics and stared at Guerra. From behind his right leg a small child dressed in only in oversized cloth shorts, a boy, on the cusp of becoming an adolescent looked at Gray with wary and yet curious eyes. He tested the word again, "Rrrah-radeeashun."

Gray scrutinized the boy closely. He had messy mop of raven hair that reached to his collarbone, dusky skin, big soft brown eyes and a thin, lanky body. No, not thin, just trim. While the skin along his face and torso was tight, he couldn't see every single detail of his ribcage and his young body didn't look like it was eating itself. His stomach was flat, slightly toned and without the chub that most kids his age would have had.

The boy recoiled beneath his gaze and hid behind Guerra, a single hand reaching up to his throat. He pressed himself against Guerra's side and gave a small whimper of fear. Guerra uncrossed one of his arms and rested it on the kid's shoulder in a reassuring manner.

'Where the hell did this kid come from. When did he get in here, Guerra isn't reacting so he already knew but still…' Gray's face lost all traces of emotion as he recalled how both his forefinger and thumb were able to touch each other when he was strangling the person intruding in his personal space. His lips downturned with disgust as the reality of what he had almost done became apparent.

Nonetheless he wouldn't go blaming himself over stuff he didn't do, maybe the kid just had a sore throat or something like that. Also Guerra was younger too, it could have been him who he was strangling, and he definitely didn't need to worry about the Courier Six. So he hadn't down anything wrong; Right?

"Who's the kid?"

Guerra looked back over to Gray and gave his fellow wastelander a quick once over.

"This is the kid whose throat you tried to crush about 10 minutes ago."

'Shit.' Gray glanced up at Guerra before returning his steely gaze to the boy.

"He's also the one who has been taking care of you, since before I arrived in this village."

Gray's expression didn't change in the slightest.

"From what I gathered from the village leader, most of the other kids were afraid to get close to you after you arrived in the village center. But this one and a few other kids dragged you almost 3 quarters of a mile to this hut."

Gray arched an eyebrow as he scanned the boy over. "Why are a bunch of kids doing a man's job?"

"This is a village of orphans and one group of them share this hut and they all had a hand in dragging you here." Guerra nudged the boy from behind his back to his front and rested a hand on his shoulder.

Gray's eyes narrowed to thin slits as he recognized one reason why Guerra had been so accepting of the youth within his personal space.

He continued, "This little one is the oldest so he bore most of your bulk. Even with a handicap."

From the boy's left shoulder down there was nothing. No fingers, no hand, no wrist, no forearm, no bicep. In the dull light of the hut produced by a crude oil lantern resting in a corner, Gray saw several massive discolorations along the boy's right flank that crept across his torso and a small bit of his neck. The dark discolorations ended in jagged tips a few of which manage to prod his left flank. Gray didn't even as blink.

"Guerra."

"Yes?"

"I thought you said we weren't in the wastes anymore."

"We aren't. You'll see that as soon as we step outside."

Gray pointed a finger at the boy's almost keloidic chest. "Then why does is look like the kid had a play date with a pack of deathclaw pups?"

"There are creatures of substantial size here as well. It isn't too radical to imagine one of those creatures mauled this boy."

All too eager to stop talking about his near successful, unconscious attempt at child murder, he jumped at the opportunity to change the subject.

"There's big shit here too? What like some kinda lion or something? If there are human beings here and nukes haven't dropped that means it's like the old world right? The old world had lions. I wanna see a lion. Get me a pet lion Guerra. I want a fucking lion right now!"

"…Yes … there are old world animals like deer and rabbits so I'd imagine that some sort of predator would have to exist to hunt them, but there also some kind of… creatures. Abnormal creatures, in some cases are just as if not more hazardous to life than the abominations of the wasteland. The translation program I developed for the Pip-boy has been working pretty well so far and I have been able to decipher most of what the locals say; whenever they speak of the abnormal creatures I just get a slew of vocabulary and terms like deadly, creature, apparition, hazard and monster."

"Hmm", Gray hummed as he discreetly traced the uneven scars of the boy's torso, ignoring the quivering nub at the boys shoulder.

"After a couple calibrations and other slight adjustments, I got something that roughly translated into 'Danger Beast' or 'Risk Species'. When I spoke it back to them they responded with nods and repeated it back to me, so I assume that I got it right along with my other translations. I am going to send your Pip-Boy another update I just finished today. You should be receiving it… now.

With a small chirp of notification Gray turned his eyes from the boy's mauled chest and onto his Pip-Boy's screen. He scrolled over from his stats to his data category and there in his notes subsection was a brand new white line of random binary text. Off to the right of the text was the image of an Elite riot armor outfitted vault boy, handing an envelope to a bald vault boy wearing the Desert Ranger Stalker Armor, with scars all across his face and the top of his skull, and sporting an unnaturally wide grin. He began the download.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph Guerra, this shit is gonna take a whole week to finish?! How fucking complex is the language?"

"A week? That's odd. It should take less than an hour to download. As for the language, it isn't necessarily that complex. There is actually quite an interesting pattern I discovered in the language barrier between them and us. The inhabitants' of this tribe in particular speaks an odd mix of what I was able to identify as Spanish and Japanese."

"If it's only one language, then why is it taking so long?"

"It's probably taking so long because this is only one of the dozens of other languages that I have been translating." Seeing Gray's questioning stare Guerra continued. "It took me two weeks to find you after I arrived on the Southeast part of the continent, island, whatever the fuck this place is. During that time I came across dozens of tribes; numbering in the tens of thousands and a few larger tribes sporting around a hundred thousand or more in population."

"I'll ask again then, why is it taking so long."

Because there isn't a single common language between all of the tribes in the southern region. All of the tribes in the Southern territories, excluding those beneath the thumb of larger tribes, consider themselves separate. We are in the deserts of the southwest at the moment, and while there are many tribes in this territory, they are all spread out over a wide area so there could be an explanation for the different languages because of dialect. However it is the same for the tribes of Southeastern rainforests who exist in relatively close proximity to one another."

"So let me get this straight and summarize all of the shit you just said. Correct me anywhere I'm wrong and fill in anything I miss."

Guerra nodded and held up a fist. "I have been out for two weeks." Guerra raised his index finger. "We are in a desert that is apparently right next to a rainforest." Guerra raised his middle finger. "The people who live in these territories are all borderline xenophobic." Guerra raised his ring finger and interrupted Gray there.

"Let me add something on to that. With this tribe as one of the few exceptions, the majority are xenophobic despite their individual populations looking exactly, and I mean exactly alike give or take a few small genetic differences."

With his part spoken Guerra, shifted slightly as a notion for Gray to continue. "It took you two weeks to find me even though you can cross 48 to 72 miles a day like its casual stroll from Goodsprings to Primm." Guerra raised his pinkie finger.

Gray looked down at the ground before digging a hand into the ground. He lifted it to his face and scanned it for a moment, squeezing it before letting the loose dirt slip through his fingers slowly. He turned back to Courier Six and gave a small smirk. "Two weeks huh? You must be getting old…"

Guerra poker face was impeccable.

That small smirk grew into a savage grin, "…or is this place that goddamn big."

Guerra's façade broke and he allowed a small smile to form on his face. He motioned Gray over to his side while he scrolled through the pip-boy before pulling up the world map and tilting it to Gray. The screen was mostly black, but near the bottom left corner of the screen were three triangular markers. A part of the surrounding area had been revealed along with a narrow path leading to the center of the right part of the map.

"We are right here," Guerra pointed to the blinking markers on the map. "The first thing I should get across is that the largest faction and one of the oldest factions on this continent are known as the Empire. They have history spanning several hundred years, are arguably the most technologically developed, and have a lot of territory with large claims in all parts of the continent except for the north and the southwest were we currently are."

"Should I even ask how they got all of that land?"

Guerra rolled his eyes and scoffed lightly. "It's an autocratic monarchy and just like all other autocratic monarchies and dictatorships that have ever existed, they claimed it through blood, violence, gunboat diplomacy, more violence and a healthy amount of war crimes to set some examples. I bet you 100 caps they did in the name of God's will or some Manifest Destiny shit like that. One native I asked about the empire called them, a "tumor" that is always seeking to grow and bring nothing but death and suffering with it as it does."

"I'm guessing not too many folks like the empire."

"No they do not."

"You know what that name just sounds like an asshole name to me. I mean "ooooh look, we're the spooky _Empire_! Submit and surrender! There is no hope! OOOOOH, scary!" I haven't even had the chance to sodomize one of the bastards with push-knife and I already don't like them, they remi-"

"I feel as though there is something wrong with that statement."

"-AS I WAS SAYING BEFORE I was so rudely interrupted! Those fucks remind me of the legion and you know how I feel about the Legion."

Guerra snorted out a laugh, "The whole Mojave knows' you hate the Legion. Unlike the Legion however they have a legitimate military and are well equipped. They are… fairly strong overall."

"I heard some hesitation there. Strong is a vague word Six. Clarify a little more why don't cha'.

Using the dials along the Pip-boy, the sixth courier moved the cursor to the center-eastern portion of the continent.

"No."

Guerra just nodded his head up and down.

Gray didn't relent. "No way man, I refuse to believe that shit, even if they are some sort of superpower wherever the hell we are, no faction can survive being surrounded on all sides for hundreds of years by other rival factions, not unless they have the benefit of some ridiculously hostile terrain or the technological gap is massive!"

Guerra nodded his head again.

"Let me tell you a story. I was bypassing the last village on the border of the Southeastern tribes, when a tribal scout came charging out of the forest, into the village and ran into the largest building in sight. Not five minutes later and all the men of the village are picking up their spears and masks and the women and children are shutting themselves inside their huts. I imagine that the scout must've told his village leader or whoever else was in charge, something along the lines of, "We are about to have company"."

"I decided to go check for myself what all the commotion was about, and what do I see? A massive force of infantry, outfitted in white and gray approaching from the North; later I learned these were Empire soldiers. I decided to stick around for a while and lo and behold the inevitable skirmish between the Empire and one of the southeastern tribes took place. Now just to give you a scale of how lopsided the numbers were, it was the Empire's 50,000 men with shitty automatic weapons and steel tipped spears against this relatively small village's 5,000 strong, skirt & mask wearing, flint tipped spear throwing militia."

Gray clapped his hands once in finality, "Spears? Ok, so the village got stomped into the ground. What makes the Empire so strong? A 10-1 advantage with a technology gap that includes guns seems just a little bit one-sided."

"Let me finish. You with think that it would have been an extremely one-sided battle, but then you remember that this is a rainforest were in, and that the natives have lived here forever. They also had nowhere else to go because their neighbors were just as likely to kill and take advantage of them as the Empire. So they fought, and the Empire felt it."

"In a matter of a day the tribe prepared hundreds of traps and pitfalls, lures, ambushes and even made new paths to lead to areas infested with those Danger Beast abominations. In a matter of a week 6,000 to 7,000 of their number were dead. Countless others were mauled and out of the fight and morale actually became so low at one point a few men committed suicide while a couple others attempted to mutiny and were executed."

Gray clapped his hands once again, "So the village, using the knowledge of the terrain and its dangers pushed back the Empire and lived to jerk off in a corner yet another day."

"Let me fin-"

"Fuck you!"

Guerra chuckled to himself. "All right I'll stop messing with you." His eyes lost all mirth and his mouth was set into a dour frown."

Gray caught the immediate change in the mood and gave the other teen his full attention.

"The only reason the tribe didn't get completely steamrolled, was because of the forest and the advantages it gave them. For every ten, they took one hundred and mauled another thousand. Then one day, just when I assumed the Empire's whole force would route, a small group of three riders arrived at the Empires main camp. They were all a bunch of oddjobs; to give you an example, the most memorable one was this big shirtless guy with some kind of primitive gasmask, carrying what looked to be a flamethrower. There was another guy with a weird double sided axe and a fruitcake with a pair of giant scissors."

"The fuck?"

"Can't make this shit up." Guerra's brow furrowed as the memory played through his head yet again. "Initially, the individuals themselves didn't seem too dangerous… then I saw what those weapons could do. They tore through that tribal militia like nothing; the fairy with scissors was cutting through trees and natives like a hot knife through butter, sometimes several at a time. The brute with the axe split it in two and started throwing them around like boomerangs on steroids tagging anyone who was taking cover high in a tree. Don't even get me started on the guy with the flamethrower, he just burned everything to ashes. By the next day the Empire's main force had reached the village center and the men decided to start… enjoying, their spoils of war." He didn't need to hint just how the Empire soldiers celebrated.

"Did you kill those fucks?" Gray asked expectantly.

"The flamethrower guy left a short while after they captured the village, but the other two stayed to 'celebrate'. I snuck in during the night and slit the lumberjack, and the fairy's throats. For some odd reason though, I couldn't atomitize their weapons; I didn't want to waste them either, so I set a tracer on each and buried them about 20 miles separate from one another. The thing that is bothering me, is that none of the weapons seemed… right, it seemed as though something was wrong, none of them fit the aesthetic of the rest of the Empires army and each weapon seemed unique, too unique almost supernatural."

"Guerra, I know you're going senile but let's take a quick moment to caress and hold onto that wonderful thing we know as reality. There is an explanation for everything even those war winning bullshit weapons and besides, the people who use them are still human."

Guerra nodded in agreement to Gray's logic "You're probably right. Anyway to sum up what I was saying earlier, though the Empire is the most modernized force in this world, their strength primarily comes from those unique weapons. They are just as you said, war winners. They rely on them too much and without them I doubt any successful campaign into another peoples' territory couldn't be classified as anything better than a pyrrhic victory. To be honest I wonder why in the hell they still use both fire and swo-"

He paused as he felt a small hand tug on his trench coat. Cold brown eyes made contact with innocent hazel. The disabled youth reached up with his one right arm and pointed to the Pip-Boy on his forearm.

"Y-y-yuur Pip-B-Boi?" The boy spoke switching his gaze back and forth between the information processor and the taller adolescent.

Guerra's cold gaze gained some warmth and he produced a small smile as he nodded his head. " _Si, mi joven_ , my Pip-Boy," He took a knee and showed the young boy the bright green cropping of the map. "Mmmmaaaap, map, can you say that?"

The boy scrunched his face and the nub where his left arm would be quivered as he attempted to recreate the sounds produced by his elder.

"M-mmmap?" He repeated with some uncertainty.

Guerra's smile grew just a little wider and he nodded again. "That's right. Map."

"The hell is his problem."

Any warmth in his face vanished as he turned back to face Courier Five.

"He's was mute a week ago, but now I'm starting to think it is more along the lines of him not developing a first language, or forgetting how to speak his first language. He still responds physically to others that speak the local language, he just doesn't speak their language back. Oddly enough he's been picking up the little bit of English I've said over the past couple of weeks and attempted to communicate it back to me."

Gray hummed in a show of approval. "So he's an S.L.S huh?"

"A what?"

"A smart little shit."

"…ignoring your idiocy for the moment-"

"Hey! That was clever and you know it!"

"-he is quite intelligent for his age, moreso observant."

Both Guerra and Gray silently watched the boy tinker with the dials of the Pip-Boy. He was switching through categories and going through subcategories, his eyes wide with intrigue.

Pulling his arm back, to the dismay of the boy, Guerra motioned to Gray to follow him towards a small opening in the hut.

"What's the brats' name?" Gray questioned as he followed in step.

"He doesn't have one."

A wistful emotion briefly passed through the Courier 5's face, before it was replaced by a neutral smirk.

"Shame."

If Guerra caught the flicker of emotion, he didn't address it. Instead, he reached into his trenchcoat and pulled out a _**LARGE**_ 5-barrelled 'Elephant Gun' Hunting Revolver. The metal of the frame was a gray 'shadowcast' with a dull polish, while the cylinder and ejector tube were a dark burgundy and the barrel was colored a dusky bronze with multiple burgundy engravings spiraling along its length. Along the back of the black grip was a red strip and near the base of the grip there was a weathered symbol of a red bull head. Along the 10" barrel was an engraving that read "Raging Bull".

Guerra flipped the revolver, reaffixing his grip on the barrel and holding it out to Gray. "C'mon, I told the village leader that I would talk to him as soon as you woke up."

Gray took the hand cannon by the grip, spun it on his index finger and tucked it away within his duster. "If it's you talking to him then why do I need to come?"

"Two intimidating albeit underage, armored men with long coats, bandoliers, barely concealed guns, or rather in your case gun-"

"Fuck You."

"- and scary gas-mask helmets that glow, are better than one. Also speaking of guns, ED-E has yours; last thing I needed was for one of the kids to flip the safety of the L.S.o.D and pop their little cap off, so I had him hold onto them. He should be returning from his reconnaissance in a short while."

Gray's smirk widened. "Good, I was wondering why I was feeling a little bit light around the waist, but I still don't have a reason to come."

Already ducking down and out through the small opening in the hut, Guerra quickly answered back, "The kid has been practicing his English on me for the last week. I'm sure he'll start trying it on you too."

"The fuck he will! I'll cut his little tongue out!"

"You don't have your knives on you." Guerra answered from the outside of the hut, his voice fading as he walked away from his irate companion. "And put your helmet on as well; if I still have my scars, you still have yours and I don't need you scaring the locals."

Gray paused.

He raised a hand to his face and felt the odd texture of skin, tight and smooth with youth, but toughened by years of exposure to toxic radiation and baking beneath the sun's gaze. His fingers stroked down across his cheek to the corner of his mouth, then traced from the corner of his mouth to his cheekbone in an upwards arc. He grimaced.

His hand fell to his side and he clenched a fist. ' _I get turned back into a brat and I can't even lose my fucking landmarks.'_ Coming out of his short spell of self-loathing he glanced around the small space of the hut for the last missing piece of his armor. "Where is my helmet?"

"H-hill-mit?"

His attention was drawn to the doorway where the boy from earlier stood. In his one right hand he lifted and held out Gray's gas mask helmet.

Gray's expression was straight as he walked up to the smaller boy. Even though he himself was in a teenager's body, he was still bigger than the boy a head and shoulders. He stared at the boy as he held out his single arm offering the helmet.

Gray watched his eyes closely, gauging him. He expected to see only fear as he closed on the boy. It wouldn't have surprised him, with his face and all. Indeed he did see fear in the boys' eyes, but it was smothered with curiosity. The boy tilted his head slightly and stuck out his one good arm, presenting the helmet to the older teen. His arm shook slightly from the effort of holding the 5-pound helmet at a full arms length. Gray looked down on the boy offering him his helmet.

He didn't do well with kids.

To be fair not many wastlelanders did. That was Guerra's niche. They were so annoying, so impressionable and oh so stupid. He would've eventually found his helmet. It wasn't like there were that many places it could've been. Dumb kid didn't need to do it for him. It's not like he was the crippled one. All the same…

* * *

xxxxx

"Decanus Dead Sea!" A young boy dressed in the modified garb of a recruit legionary rushed to the front of the legionary deputy's patrol. "Decanus Dead Sea! A moment of your time, you've forgotten your blade!"

The 15-man formation came to a halt and the leading man outfitted in an odd conglomerate of old world football shoulder pads, Brahmin hide chest protector, slitted skirt, work boots stepped out of line to meet the recruit. A bikers' helmet and goggles with a scarf, were wrapped around his face, keep out the sand of the Mojave and concealing his expressions.

Only breathing a little bit harder from the half mile jog to catch the patrol, the recruit took a knee as his superior approached. He held his head low and raised his hands. Resting in them was what appeared to be a makeshift machete. It looked as though someone had taken a lawnmower blade, fixed it between two pieces of wood and held it together with strips of cloth and wonderglue. The wood was cracked and parts of the mower blade were exposed from where the wood had rotted away and the blade itself was rusted, nicked and chipped.

The Decanus with his small fringe of black and red feathers atop his biker helmet, loomed over the recruit and snatched the makeshift machete from his open hands.

Dead Sea eyed his blade carefully, holding it aloft at several different angles and scrutinizing the wear of his blade as if it were his first time seeing it. He ran a finger lightly along the sharp of the blade, allowing the uneven nicks of the metal to catch and pull at his skin. He tapped his hand along the flat of the blade as if to check the temper of the 200 year-old rusted metal. The recruit lifted his head slowly, just enough to look at the odd actions of the unusually silent Decanus. "Deca-"

Dead Sea had begun his swing before the recruit was even half way through his sentence, the recruit, seeing the incoming weapon, pulled back to avoid the lethal strike. He was successful in his evasion, rolling onto his back to lessen the impact of his back. It was only when a pain comparable to the cruel sting of 100 Cazadors filled his left cheek, that the young recruit realized he was only partially successful. Dead Sea struck again with the hilt of the machete, not even allowing the recruit to clutch his split. He boy was knocked on to his rear before a dirty, steel-toed construction boot stomped down onto his chest. The air left the recruits' lungs and his eyes watered.

"Who gave you permission to speak?" Dead Sea stomped down again ignoring the recruits' wail of pain. "Who gave you permission to touch my blade?" The man stepped off of the boys' chest and gave him a wicked kick to the ribs flipping him onto his side. "Who gave you permission to breathe runt." Dead Sea grabbed the boy by the back of his shaved head before readjusting his grip to the back of his neck. He leaned down to whisper into his ear, "And who gave you permission to cry runt."

The recruit couldn't bring himself to answer for he was being strangled by his own pain, choking on his sobs as the tears mixed with blood and stinging as they entered the open gash on his cheek. "W-wh-"

The irate Decanus dug the recruits face into the dirt. "I still haven't given you permission to speak runt." Dead Sea released the boy and stomped down on his right arm as he returned to the formation.

The recruit was hurt. His swollen left cheek looked like a filthy mess of month-old hamburger meat, dirt and blood. His lower lip was busted and the blood had already coagulated with the Mojave dirt forming a dark ugly smear across the fat lip.

The other legionaries simply stared straight as their commander finished his thrashing of their younger brother in arms. Mutt… if you ever approach me or lay a hand on anything mine own, I will remove a finger. Do it again and I'll remove another one; a finger for every offense." Dead Sea turned away from the downed recruit and returned to the front of the single file. The patrol continued their march and eventually disappeared over the horizon and into the desert.

Only after he was sure the patrol was long departed did he move. Dead Sea had given him quite the thrashing, breaking a couple of ribs and leaving his nose uneven and damp with his body's own crimson. It was still early and the sun had yet to breach the horizon, but if he didn't start moving now either the heat or the geckos would do him in. The recruit raised himself off of the ground and glared at the backs of those who were no longer there. His empty gray eyes glowed with unfathomable anger and hatred.

The boy, broken and bleeding, just glared. He glared off into the nothingness of the Mojave until his mouth went dry and his eyes dried to the point of gaining a crusty yellow film. He finally turned and began making his way back to camp, his empty eyes still managing to betray thoughts of death, suffering and pain. The young boy couldn't understand what those thoughts meant and why they… appealed to him in such a persuasive manner. Nor did he understand why the Decanus was the subject of every thought.

* * *

xxxxx

All the same… he was just a kid.

Gray reached out and took the helmet from the boy. He flipped it around and stared into the green lenses of the mask before lowering his gaze to the area along the mouth. It was here in fine detail that he looked over one last modification he had made. A shark mouth vinyl had been carved into the metal of the helmet going 'from ear to ear'. A large, but shallow gash was located beneath the left lens traveling down the length of the mask and through the shark mouth vinyl. Though it was faded from years of exposure, you could still see some of the white and black paint used to give the helmet its manic smile.

"Yuur helmit?" The boys' eyes were still curious, but had lost all prior fear.

'Kid doesn't seem to mind the scars all that much. Guerra found himself a little hardass he did.'

Gray flipped the helmet around once more and slid it over his head, before sealing it to the bodysuit. He raised a hand towards the boy and rested it on his head.

"Yeah half-pint, this is my helmet."

The boy stared unflinchingly into the green glowing fish-eye lenses of the helmet and produced small smile.

Gray felt his heartbeat accelerate. It wasn't so uncommon to get a smile from the citizens of Goodsprings, Freeside or even the odd NCR conscript deciding to burn some caps on the strip. The thing was that all of them were _always_ laced with an underlying layer of fear and uncertainty. They knew him only as the Courier 5 and the Courier 5 was someone to be feared. Then there were those who saw him with his mask off.

As of current Guerra was the only one of those people who were still breathing.

But this kid, this young boy, handicapped and scarred; he didn't fear him without the mask.

That smile. So earnest, so honest, so… innocent. It was unlike the street urchins of freeside who'd smile at you while picking your pocket. It made him wanna laugh and vomit at the same time.

Innocence. How long had it been since he lost his? Had he ever been innocent. No. No one born into that damned world of radiation fire and blood was truly innocent. But this boy truly was. 'Hope he could hold onto that for just a little while longer.'

Gray walked past the boy towards the entrance of the hut. He could see a shadow being cast towards the hut. Guerra must have come back to wait on him, or to make sure he didn't keep to his word and actually de-tongue the boy. He ducked down to step out the hut and stood upright into the new world. The evening rays of the sun filtered through the green fiber optics of his helmet. A small breeze picked up loose sand and carried it off to rest elsewhere. The sky was a magnificent mix of cerulean blue orange and a dark-hued purple. His spine tingled and he felt a little queasy at the truth of Guerra's words.

Then he finally noticed the sharp tips of several flint tip spears positioned just beneath his chin. Not a second later, Gray's hand was at his side. 'The Raging Bull' was drawn and the 'Butcher of the West' moved.

* * *

 **And so the second Courier wakes! Dun Dun Daaaaaa! So the second chapter is finished. Completed. Done. It's a done deal. And now I get to focus on the third and fourth, both of which still need a little bit of work and revision. Liked the chapter? If ya did, please leave a review and tell me what I could do to make it better, thanks for your time and have a good day.**


	3. Chapter 3

**So like... I meant for this to be posted on the first...of September, but here were are a month later in October. *Sigh* Whatevs, I had to deal with some issues in the family concerning health, I lost a few sheets of the paper manuscript I write the chapters on and shortly after that I had to start preparing for midterms. It's been a busy couple of months. However I'm actually kinda glad that I'm posting this later than I initially planned. More ideas came to mind, it gave me more time to review the chapter, make dialogue a little smoother and more meaningful and just a whole bunch of other things that were kinda lacking before. Anyway this is what I've been working on for the past 4 months. Let's get this started...**

* * *

 **Edited: This chapter has been edited. Also if anyone can tell me any possible reasons why I can't read my reviews for this chapter that'd be great! P.M me or leave a side comment in a review, thanks.**

* * *

Hard to Kill

Chapter 3: Segundon

xxxxXXxxxx

 _We've come a long long way together,_

 _Through the hard times and the good,_

 _I have to celebrate you baby,_

 _I have to praise you like I should…_

 _-Fat Boy Slim, Praise You_

xxxxXXxxxx

 _Julia Pratt was a very, very, **very** , tough woman. Hardy, unbreakable, stubborn and outspoken, she carried a tongue so sharp it could cut diamond. She had to be this way if she was to garner any respect in the wasteland. It was actually expected as a dedicated member of the rangers. She and her fellow rangers were experienced. Seasoned._

 _Unfortunately 15 years of constant active duty could leave a person with a little bit more experience than any one person should ever have. So like many other veterans she got tough. She became hard. She became emotionless._

 _Then she met Andrew._

 _Andrew… to imagine how closed-minded she was when she was younger. To remember just how cold she had remained, or at least tried to remain after they had given themselves to one another._

 _How cold, she remained before and even after Guerra had been born. How cold she had been even after Andrew promise to take care of the baby, so she would be able to continue being a ranger. How she had planned to continue being a ranger regardless. How she just viewed the baby as another obstacle to be removed._

 _Oh God… how monstrous she used to be._

" _Mother, I'm going to turn you over now." A light voice called to her._

 _How monstrous she wished she could be now._

 _Julia grunted out her affirmative as two hands placed themselves' respectfully along her waist and back to gently shift her from side to her front. A soft splash from the bucket a few feet to her left was followed by the cooling sensation of a damp rag on her tough leathery skin._

 _In all her years she never would've imagined that here she would lay in the middle of Caesar's main camp, beaten but unbroken. Whatever that counted for._

 _But the one thing she never imagined was to be on her deathbed in the middle of Caesar's main camp being treated by a legion recruit. Legion recruits were often the most fanatic and with a crazed desire to bring "order" and "stability" to the infidels of the wastes. Many died before they got enough experience to realize everything wasn't so black and white and calm down that fanaticism, just enough to not run into a wall of bullets alongside other mindless drones._

 _Maybe it had to do with exactly who this recruit was. Rather, who the drone thought she was._

 _She grimaced slightly as the damp rag traced along the edges of a particularly large sore developing along her flank. "Watch it you little fuck!" She hissed lowly._

 _The hands and rag shied away from her side and she cringed as she knew what was coming next. The imminent agony and suffering about to befall her._

 _She heard a small sniffle._

" _I-I'm sorry mother. I-I didn't mean to hurt-" The young recruit's voice cracked as he attempted to finish his sentence, devolving into pitiful mix of sobs and moans of apology. "Jesus Christ your so fucking soft!" Then came the regret._

 _Though she loathed to admit, she would be in much worse shape (and possibly rotting in the literal sense, to death) if it weren't for this one recruit. She had been in Legion captivity for the past 15 years and somewhere around the 8 year mark, this mini-me of that man, wearing her eyes and colored to match her skin tone, showed up in front of the three sticks with a towel tossed over them that she called a tent. She was repulsed (to be fair, she despised anything even remotely related to the legion)._

 _Then it called her mother._

 _ **It**_ _. For the first four months after the boys existence was made apparent, that was how she addressed the spawn that dared to call himself her child. Whenever he would arrive at her tent, he would always have wounds along his body._

 _He would usually leave with another bruise and maybe some lacerations if she had gotten her hands on any particularly thin pottery. Oddly enough she found that even though she ended up voiding herself of a majority or all of her dish and silverware, she would wake up the next day to find crude handmade replicas at her door. It was sometime during the 5_ _th_ _month that the boy showed up to her crappy tent with a splint, a few strips of cloth, and dirty bandages tucked beneath one arm. Her confusion was brief before the boy seated himself just outside of her throwing distance, sat the supplies down onto the ground and reached with his right arm over to his left and pulled it onto his lap with a small gasp._

 _It was at this moment she truly opened her eyes, and looked at the boy who called her mother. He was hurt. No, it was much more serious than that. He had been mauled. His face was an amalgamation of 200 year-old spam and blood. A massive gash just beneath his left eye took up the majority of his cheek and the rest of his face was also swollen and bruised. His left arm was limp, and she could see from where she was laying how his forearm seemed to be… uneven. Broken._

 _The area around the break was shaded a dark ugly purple. It didn't stop there, tracing her eyes up the arm she noticed some bruising around the elbow and upper arm. His pee-wee football padding acting as a pseudo armor, had been cracked and loosed allowing her to see the sickly discoloring along his ribs._

 _She ignored him._

 _At least she tried to ignore him. She really did. She tried to ignore his gasps of pain. She tried to ignore his clumsy and fruitless attempts to fix his own body without the knowhow. She watched the boys' body shudder with the pain of his failed attempts to correct his arm, only succeeding in damaging the surrounding muscle._

 _She didn't care. She didn't care. She didn't care that she cared. She ignored the voice in the back of her head pushing her, goading her. Reminding her that she had started to expect this brat every, or every other day. She didn't care. She wouldn't. Fuck the voice, he was a legion brat. So she would ignore him. Let him suffer; He'd just grow up to be another mindless drone of the legion. She didn't care._

' _He wears your flesh.'_

 _Julia grit her teeth._

' _He bears your eyes.'_

 _She lowered her head._

' _He has_ _ **his**_ _face, but he is yours.'_

 _She clenched her hands as they rested in her lap._

' _ **YOU**_ _bore him, just like the one before. Do not make the same mistake a second time.'_

' _He's not my child.' She shuddered._

 _Julia looked up and her cold silver eyes, wrought with turmoil locked eyes with the innocent grey of the boy. His face was tight with grief, and his expression pleaded to her 'help me', not as a person to another person, not as a child to an adult, but as a son begging his mother..._

* * *

 _Ever since then she had been taking care of any wounds the boy had when he arrived at her tent. It had taken a little while, but thanks to Julia's efforts the arm that had been broken had healed amazingly fast, within two weeks time of the initial break and the application of a proper brace. She then gave him a watered down version of Ranger "Quick Therapy" to get his atrophied muscles back up to snuff._

 _Ranger "Quick Therapy" was involved the vigorous and firm beating and stretching of the muscles, followed by stimpacking the affected area. The ideal is that when the muscles repair themselves, they will be stronger and the ranger in question will be back in action in a matter of days, rather than weeks or months._

 _The downside was that it was rather painful to beaten with a 2x4 and stretched until the back of your head could touch the soles of your feet. It was also traumatic. So instead of tenderizing muscle via beat stick, or folding someone in half and calling it stretching, Julia just gave hard chops to his forearm and hammerlocked his arm behind his back._

 _He complained once about the pain while Julia was applying herbal healing powder. She immediately raised her hand and gave him a swift cuff to the side of the head._

" _Quit your bitching and take it like a man," she rabidly retorted. She scanned his eyes for any trace of tears. He gave up nothing but a small sniffle._

 _Satisfied, Julia finished applying the healing powder to his arm before moving around his brace to other bruised and stressed spots on his muscle and bone. She looked up from her work to see the boys' face tight and his lips downturned harshly into a quivering frown._

 _She snorted before looking back down and focusing on her work yet again, straightening out and slowly stretching his arm at five minute intervals. It was as she applied a salve onto one of the larger bruises that she felt a warm drop of liquid on her left hand. Followed by another. Then one more._

 _Her head snapped to the boy._

 _He flinched and moved his free arm up to try and wipe his face and clear away the evidence of his weakness. She caught his arm and stared at him with a souless grey-eyed gaze._

 _He nearly pissed himself in fear and awaited more violence for his small slip of weakness. The trainers at the arena punished them for weakness and his mother seemed keen on doing the same._

 _But she didn't raise her hand to cuff him along his head. She didn't tighten her grip or anything of the such. She just stared at his puffy eyes and the two trails of tears streaming down his face._

 _Then she let his arm go and went back to her work._

 _The boy was confused, and it showed on his face through the tears. Why didn't she hit him again? Didn't weakness deserve punishment?_

 _Silence settled between the two them, the only sound being the boy's occasional sniffles, or the shuffling of her tents rags in the afternoon breeze._

 _She finished applying the salve and re-wrapped his arm with bandages. She then re-applied the splint over the bandages. It had been healing well over the past three weeks, but that was no reason to leave anything to chance._

 _She released his arm and rested her hands on her lap. The boy took it as his queue to leave and without wasting a second stood to his feet and turned to leave._

 _Julia huffed._

" _Kid."_

 _The boy stopped and turned to look at her._

" _It's ok to cry. Crying isn't bad everyone has cried at least once. Just don't cry over pain. Crying due to someone physically or mentally causing you pain just shows that you are weak to pain. So whoever or whatever is causing you pain just keeps on causing you more pain until they get what they want. Never cry to pain. Never be a victim to pain."_

 _The boy was in awe. Eyes still shedding tears, but no longer fearful; Still sniffling, but no longer quivering with distress. The words had resonated._

" _Besides, a little bit of pain never killed anyone. It builds character." Julia rested her head against a calloused brown hand and scrunched her face._

" _While I'm at it, what is your name kid?"_

" _Mutt… half breed, I don't know really. The trainers usually just point at us and say 'you' or 'boy'."_

 _The lack of sarcasm or spite in the boys voice, told Julia wonders about his level of ignorance. Rather was it innocence?_

" _Well both of those names are stupid, and I'm not just going to refer to you as kid. I'll have to give you another name."_

 _The boys' curiosity was visible as he wiped the remains of his tears off his face._

' _A new name? A new name… A new name!'_

 _Julia shifted her hand so she could rest her chin in the webbing between her thumb and forefinger._

' _What name would fit the kid? Norman? No. Steve? No, he needs different, more unique. Leopold! ...Fuck no, too unique. Arthritis? Actually I think that was a disease or some shit like that.'_

 _She looked the young boy over closely. He was slim, but trim. His build seemed to be more lightweight than other young recruits in training, but he still had an above average musculature that comes with working your body into the ground every single day._

' _Ashton? Michael? Royce? Chris? Jake? …Andrew? 'Fuck that, I'm not using Andrew's name on someone else's kid.' Julia then found herself looking at her own eyes on the boys face. The perfect name came to mind._

" _Grayson. Your name is Grayson."_

 _The boy perked up at the new sound, and practiced it along his own tongue._

" _Gray... Gray-sun? Gray-ss-oon! Gray-"_

" _You know what, let's keep it simple. How about I just call you Gray."_

" _Gray. My name is Gray! Thank you mother."_

 _The newly christened Gray rushed back to Julia and hugged her tightly, resting his head on her cloth-wrapped bosom._

 _Julia recoiled from both the impact of the small body and the sudden intrusion of her personal space. She was frozen in place for a moment as she kept herself from overreacting and maiming the affectionate little boy._

 _Julia slowly raised her hand and rested it on the boys head._

 _She didn't smile._

" _Pull back on the throttle some kid, last thing I need is for you to fuck up your brace and have your arm finish healing sideways."_

 _The bald-headed child smiled as he pulled away from her, he just stood there for a moment staring at her. Julia waved him away. "Off you go, and don't fuck up that arm again!"_

* * *

 _That was six years ago, and over those said amount of years the close-shaved innocent little boy that she had healed, educated, looked after and named, had grown into a rugged young man who now sported a short head of rusty blond hair. He stood head to chin with her now and last time she checked she was 6'2 meaning he was around 5'8". He was growing handsomely._

" _Mierda, calm down, stop fucking crying! Come on! Don't be so fucking sensitive!"_

 _But even as she rather brusquely attempted to calm his guilt ridden sobbing, she felt her own regret return in full. Not necessarily for making him cry. No, she didn't give half a molerat's ass about him wimping out every once in a while._

 _She felt regret because of what his tears caused her to realize. The little boy had and still was, growing into a Legion soldier who would be soon going into much more dangerous conflict than the relatively safe recon missions he had been tasked with as of current. He was going to become a killer, and inevitably he was going to be killed._

 _But she wouldn't let it happen. She may not have been as mobile as she used to be, but she was still able, just a little weak. She wouldn't let Gray end up like so many of the Legion's recruits. To be thrown and tossed against a wall of bullets in some fruitless effort to make a sizeable crack in the NCR forces._

 _She wouldn't let him end up as a corpse decaying on the side of a road, or as a meal to one of the Wastelands many abominations. She wouldn't let it happen._

 _Because he was her flesh, he was her blood; he was her Segundon._

 _Her second son._

* * *

xxxxx

There were 5 men of varying age and build in front of him, all with invariably tanned skin, dressed only in loose thin fabric pants that fell to their knees, and slim leather bandoliers to hold their assortment of flint spears and crude iron blades. Some wore thick turbans about their heads while others let their shaven heads catch the desert breeze. Three of them had spears pointed towards him, one of which was just beneath his chin.

They were dead men standing.

But as luck would have it, some higher power decided to grant these lost souls one last boon. Just as the irate courier was reaching for his hand-cannon, a stray thought barged its' way into the rotted recesses of his mind, staunching his thoughts of murder with a bout of pacifistic insanity.

'Hmm, well you see on any other day, with literally anyone else from the wasteland, mmm… say a fiend, a legion centurion, a raider or really anyone who had the balls to put something sharp to my throat, I would take my time to dismantle them piece by piece. But considering how I am apparently in a new world, with new people who don't know any fucking better, I think I will try that whole patience and measured reaction thing that Guerra prattles about all the time. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding and it'll all work o-'

Then one of the raiders stabbed forward into Couriers' throat.

The other men smirked and chuckled at the dead man standing. Despite looking so strange and somewhat intimidating with the glowing green eyes from the mask, and the rustic yet exotic armor, this… _man…_ was still simple enough to kill regardless of whoever they were, rather, who they used to be. They were too in shock to even attempt to stem the flow of blo-

Why was there no blood?

Then the _not_ dead figure slowly reached up and took hold of the spear pulling it out and away from his lead lined throat guard. 'Where's my wrench...'

Releasing the spear, he pivoted on his left foot, stepped back and swung his arm across his chest clearing the three spears from his neck. He took hold of the 'R.B'.

'There it is.'

With a single thought he slipped into V.A.T.S, his right hand drew the 'Raging Bull' from its' holster and his left hand fell to his side, hovering over the revolvers' hammer. Time slowed to a crawl as the interface of the Vault Assisted Targeting System appeared in his mind's eye: #1 Torso 95%, #2 Torso 95%, #3 Torso 95%, #4 Torso 95%, #5 Head 100%.

The death started on the left. The first raider, just beginning to react to the fact that their quarry was still alive and moving, pulled back to swing his curved sword at Gray's helm. The trigger was pulled and in less than a fraction of a second, the half-inch jacketed hollow point punched through the man's solar plexus, effectively splitting his rib cage in two. It began to tumble and expand, the enormous displacement ripping apart man's heart and left lung. The round continued through the thoracic and into the spinal cavity, severing his vertebrae in half before removing several pounds of flesh, blood and bone from his body as it exited out the back. The man's face was frozen with the shock of death as the corpse was knocked onto its now non-existent back.

Gray fanned the hammer.

A second later more flecks of blood, bone and tissue colored the dirt red, followed by four more bodies laying sprawled out on their backs. One of them was completely unrecognizable due to the fact that it didn't have the upper half of its face anymore. Like a crimson fountain, blood poured from the stump that remained of his skull and saturated the sandy ground an ugly maroon.

'Nice to see the age adjustment hasn't affected my aim too much', Gray mused as he glanced over the bodies.

Then he noticed one was still breathing.

Well, in reality it was less breathing and more desperate gasps mixed in with gurgling as blood filled the dying mans' respiratory system. His eyes were panicked and jerking about, but he was mostly still, aside from some movement along his shoulder blades.

"I clipped the heart, but broke the spine." He casually strolled over to the downed man de-atomitizing 20 .500 JHP+ rounds and snapping out the cylinder of his revolver. With every step a round was loaded into the cylinder, the remaining 15 were put into one of his dusters many pockets.

He flicked his wrist and the cylinder snapped back into place.

Terror, pure and true filled the downed man's face and the front of his thin cotton pants became damp with urine. He weakly spit and splattered enough to clear the blood from his mouth.

" _Hik Tok Mal…"_

Gray raised an eyebrow beneath his helmet.

"The fuck did you say?"

The downed man's eyes widened.

" _Mol,… Mol-_ ster… _Hik To-_ u're a monster…"

Gray frowned. "Is that all?" The gas mask gave his already scratchy voice an odd inhuman rasp.

"You're a monst-," The raider didn't get to finish as 'The Raging Bull' grunted out its disapproval.

"So I guess the translation program was only going to take an hour. Or was it 10 minutes? Somethin' like that." Gray picked a wayward spear off of the ground and started walking towards Guerra's coordinates on his Pip-Boy.

He knew that the little one-armed boy was huddled just behind the hut entrance, but he didn't care to look back. He didn't mind being called or looked at as a monster, it was an accurate description of what he was.

But he wasn't Lanius and he didn't take some sort of sick pleasure out of making children piss themselves in fear, before cutting off their toes, telling them to run and loosing mongrels that had been starved for days. He didn't fawn over the little shits like Guerra did, but it's not like a chord wasn't struck within him when that look of fear _always_ appeared when they saw his ugly mug. Regardless of how frayed that chord already was.

Angry shouts sounded out ahead and he pulled back the hammer on the 'R.B' and ducked into cover behind a nearby hut. As he transitioned between buildings, he caught sight of the source of the commotion.

300 something men of bronze skin tone, all dressed similar to the raiders from earlier had filled what looked to be the village center with several hundred young boys and a lesser number of older teens. Another 100 or so archers made a loose perimeter along the edge of center, standing atop adobe structures overlooking the youth. A younger man, who gray assumed a villager, was face down in the dirt with the sharp edge of a scimitar against the back of his neck.

The turban wearing thug had a large gruesome scar running down over his left eye. This milky white eye glared down at the young man he was holding at blade point. He leaned on him more, one hand deeply knotted in his hair and forcefully digging his face further into the ground. "Say something again you little shit! I fucking dare you!"

'Jesus, what is it with youngsters and hyping themselves to the point of murder? At least have an actual reason for it.'

50 or so raiders had dotted themselves along and outside the edge of the clearing near the huts, just beneath the archers' line of sight. The raiders had broken off into groups of four and two, with their objective seemingly being to search each of the domiciles for any remaining youth. Occasionally a raider would drag another kicking and screaming boy from inside his shanty hovel and walk them over to the corral 20+ plus feet away. 'Soooo, they're raiders…'

Just ahead of him was a single raider and with him, a passenger. Held tight by the arm, just below the shoulder was a boy, his body was scrawny, but his dark blue eyes were fierce and filled with spite for the adult who had taken him captive.

"Let me go you fuck face! Get off of me!"

The man slung the boy forward against the side of the hut and grabbed him roughly by the back of his neck, pinning him.

"Shut your little fucking mouth, turd! I'm all fucking pent up and I need something to work off the stress." The man leaned forward and trailed his tongue across the back of the boys' neck. "In this case that something is you turd." He smiled maliciously as the boys' struggles intensified at the realization of just how sinister the raider's intentions were.

'Pedophilic raiders…Calls for something special.'

The man undid the sash holding up his pants and pulled them down exposing his already erect loins. It was as he reached for the back of the boys' waistband the Gray acted.

All the other patrols were far enough away that he could take of this… issue without bringing attention to himself. It also helped that this freak was too lost in his own fucked up perversions to realize the rapid footsteps behind him were much too heavy to be friendly.

Gray stabbed forward, pilfered spear in hand aiming just below the base of the man's skull. With a dull *thunk* and *crunch* the sharpened flint head broke through the nape of the would-be-rapist's neck, severed his spinal cord and slipped in between the first and second vertebrae. It continued, cutting through the cartilage of the raiders' trachea, roughly tearing a gouge through the esophagus and all surrounding veins and arteries, filling the spaces left behind with thick arterial blood. It then erupted messily though the front of the thugs' neck, flecking the side of the hut and the shock stricken boy with blood.

Gray wasn't done yet. He reached around to grab the small wooden length of the spears' shaft that had gone through with the flint. He kicked out the back of the dead man's knees, dropping the corpse to chest height.

He braced his right leg against the corpses back and twisted.

With a sound similar to the snapping of dry, the dead brigands' neck did a complete 180 spraying Gray's chest armor with warm crimson blood. Gray's foot adjusted from the corpses back to the shoulder and pulled. A dull, thick sound like the wet rip of an old soggy yellow book echoed quietly in the space behind hut.

Gray analyzed the headless corpse, huffing quietly as he wiped blood from the green optics of his helmet. "A little rough around the edges," he quipped as he looked over the frayed strands of muscle and fat that remained of the corpse's neck. He directed his attention to the now broken head of the flint spear.

"I blame the tool. No user error here." He nudged the corpse aside, letting the fountain of blood saturate the sand beneath at his feet.

The Courier 5 locked eyes with the near victimized, blood-soaked and absolutely traumatized kid through the green lens of his helmet. The boys' mouth was agape and he had pressed himself back against the wall of the hut. He was motionless, but his eyes were already leaking warm tears, mixing crudely with the streaks of dried blood on his cheeks.

Gray dropped the ruined spear as he stalked forward, ignoring the boy as he walked past him continuing on towards another section of the village, leaving the youth a shaking, sobbing and irreparably damaged mess.

'One down, 400 something left to go. I'll just focus on the 15 or so left around here, I'm not trying to put a giant mark on my back.'

There was a loud scream of pain as he moved towards a small grouping of raiders. As he transitioned between huts, he caught glimpse of four raiders holding down the young adult from earlier, with his right arm prostrated forward. The scar-faced thug from earlier strutted back and forth in front of the writhing boy; he pointed the now bloody blade of his scimitar at the corral of teens and children huddled together.

"YOU SEE THIS?! YOU SEE THIS YOU IGNORANT FUCKING DUST MITES?! THIS WHAT FUCKING HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON"T CLOSE YOUR MOUTHS AND DECIDE TO TALK SHIT!"

The corral of children recoiled as the man opened his bloodied hand. Gray could vaguely identify that five small …things… laced within the raider's fingers. They looked like… they were shaped like-

'Those are fingers.'

Gray moved along. No reason to delay progress, or try to do something to overtly stupid. The sooner he found Guerra, the sooner they could leave and be on their way. To somewhere.

There were 10 men directly in front of him, grouped between a pair huts. They were spaced out in such a manner that it was nigh impossible for him to get by without being seen; because it was not like the Chinese stealth functions on his suit were still working or anything. A few raiders had gathered around a single shanty, their attention focused on whatever was going on inside. The several others had their eyes drawn to the commotion at the center. One of the raiders was somewhat separate from the rest. Not by much just a foot.

It would be enough.

The raider in front of him moved to join with the idle group. A gloved hand gripped his chin, the fingers digging into his cheeks and locking his jaw, muting his yelp of fear, into a dull murmur. The raiders' eyes were wide with panic, staring pleadingly at the backs of his fellow raiders a few arms lengths away. Just as the mental command to struggle popped into the mans' mind, a second hand gripped the back of his skull, there was a push and a pull before everything went black. Gray quickly and quietly dragged the body behind a nearby hut, pilfering the scimitar, dagger and spear from its' bandolier.

9 more to go, might as well make it quick; The 6 staring at the example in the center would go first. Since they had placed themselves so conveniently out of the line of the direct line of sight from the archers in the vicinity, getting a little bit loud and a little bit more… violent with these few stragglers wouldn't bring to much risk towards his overall concealment. After a quick and cautious glance along the rooftops to confirm that this group was relatively isolated Gray made his move.

Scimitar in his left, spear in his right he rushed the three on the right. The first raider simply collapsed, head rolling from his shoulders and pitting the sand. The other two, having not yet registered the fact they were one man down failed to defend against the sharp, pointy things aimed at their throats. They were felled just as quickly. Now all that was left was the fun task of dealing with the other three.

Quickly slipping into V.A.T.S, Gray aimed his spear at the furthest raider, just beginning to turn to face him: #1 Torso. The spear flew true, burying itself deep into the chest of the man and knocking him onto his back, groaning and gasping as a prelude to his coming death. Not fighting against the momentum of his throw, Gray spun, ripping a dagger from its' sheathe on his hip and flinging it at the closest raider. Not waiting to see the results his left hand shot forward and his thumb depressed a small trigger along his knuckle. With a sharp hiss and pop a curved four-pronged blade shot towards the last man digging into his chest. The raider gave a yelp of pain and grasped at the foreign object in his chest. Then he realized it was connect to a stiff chord of metal that ran back towards-

Gray depressed the trigger again and yanked backward with a two handed pull. Facing the enhanced strength of the Courier 5 and the pain of a hook in his chest the Raider was pulled off his feet and 10 feet through the air into Gray's extended arm.

The one with the sword.

Shrugging the gurgling raider off his blade and retracting the spear hook, Gray turned his attention to the recipient of his thrown dagger from earlier. As it were, the raider was still breathing, the dagger having embedded itself just below his right collar bone. 'Hmm, seems I missed.'

The raider groaned, clutching at the blade holstered in his shoulder and attempted to shrimp his way towards the remaining three raiders, completely unaware of the scuffle that had taken place not even 30 feet away.

As Gray reclaimed his thrown spear from its now still victim he pulled smaller knife that he had pilfered off another raiders' corpse and took hold of the blade between his thumb and forefinger. He glanced over.

'Let's try again.'

* * *

xxxxx

Vur was a soldier underneath the mighty and unquestionable rule of Sabal, one of the great Kings of the Southwestern Sands. He was a young and unwilling conscripted soldier, forced into service under the threat of a painful and slow death, but he was a soldier nonetheless. He was (somewhat) trained to kill, hardened (as much as wet toilet paper), remorse[less(ful)], completely without fear of death (Hell the fuck no), and the epitome (polar opposite) of what a warrior of the sands should be. So it was (un)surprising for him to question the ethics of the… less civilized members of Sabals' army.

"Saif, I know we're all a little tense and more than a bit pent- up, but…"

The man to his right slugged him in the arm. "Oh, just shove it Vur! I got blue balls the size of a Greater Pit Scarab, and they need relieving. Besides, I got next and I don't need you to try and fuck with my conscious."

'What conscious,' Vur thought to himself. Saif was an ugly rat-faced man so vile, not even a mother could love the mottled canvas that defined his person. Yellowed teeth protruded past his upper lip, and his beady eyes shifted from leering at Vur and staring through the huts open doorway. Beads of sweat ran down his bald scalp and collected along his brow.

It wasn't even that hotout today. He was also an immoral piece of scum. Vur did not vocalize his immediate criticisms, regardless of the truth they held, but he did voice his opinion the immoral and disgusting crime taking place just through the hut's low entrance.

"But it's not right Saif!"

His fellow conscript was not impressed. "Fuck all to what's right Vur! Nothing's going to happen! No one's going to say anything about a couple of guys just trying to get their dicks wet! You don't hear Gard bitching and whining about all that right and wrong bullshit, do you? Just wait until Sharif is done and you get _your_ dick wet. You'll stop complaining then."

"I'm not doing that."

Vur sneered, baring his rotted incisors at the man. "Yes, you will!"

"Saif-"

"Oh will you just shut the fuck up," Saif growled. "Just because you don't wanna doesn't mean you won't! Get with the program and be normal like everyone else!" Saif ducked his head back through the doorway.

Vur gave a disgusted snort as he turned away from the thug. He honestly should've expected this from the rat-faced piece of shit; If he was honest with himself he expected this from the majority of the rabble that made up Sabal's army. What he didn't expect was for Gard to be so complacent about all the wrong taking place in this conquest. He was a pretty decent guy and usually voiced his disapproval of some of the more unsavory conscripts in Sabal's militia. Vur looked past rat-face to where Gard was standing, hoping to see some look of disgust on his features.

Gard wasn't there.

Vur had only a second to wonder where his fellow militiaman had walked off to, before a sleeved forearm fastened itself around his throat. A gloved hand pressed down against the back of his head and his windpipe was crushed close and his jaws shut tight, silencing his choked surprise. He was yanked backwards and away from the unaware Saif and dragged behind the hut. The pressure on his neck increased. The world went dark.

xxxxx

Not hearing anymore responses from the other man, Saif kept his head facing the scene taking place before him. The fucking nerve of that guy. Sabal had claim to all the women in all the villages and lesser tribes under his thumb, so was it really so wrong to take advantage of an opportunity to get some pussy of his own. Even if it was a little under ripe.

"Gard you haven't had a taste either", Saif started as he turned to face the other raider. "Tell me how tight do you think sn-" He was cut off as he realized the aforementioned soldier was not present. In his place was a red stain that ran across the whole length of the adobe hut's side, just to the right of the doorway.

Just inches from where he was standing.

"What the fu-mmmph!" Any further words were smothered beneath a bloody cowhide glove. Saif's hands instinctively dropped his spear in an attempt to remove the hand restricting his breathing. His head was roughly jerked to the left, slipping a disc, but not breaking his neck.

This was quickly remedied as a thin dagger whipped round and dug into the raiders' neck.

Saif's strength left him, and he dropped to the ground clutching and clawing at his throat. 'I haven't gotten my turn yet…' Those were the raiders' last thoughts as blood filled his lungs and ran down his neck and chest.

* * *

xxxxx

Gray glared down at the raider gurgling on his own fluids, before ducking into the hut. What he found did not surprise him. A lean raider had mounted and was in the process of raping a young girl no older than 10. One meaty hand groped at her underdeveloped chest with perverse glee, while the other pressed her face into the ground. The man's wide crusty eyes betrayed his depravity and a manic grin stretched from ear to ear. Many bruises covered the girls form and hot tears mixed with white splotches of liquid and red rivulets of blood. The raider thrust his hips once more, too lost in his own twisted debauchery to notice the armored figure approaching him from his left.

Gray flipped the spear in his left hand, gripped it in both and swung for the fences.

One moment, the raider Sharif was enjoying the immoral and disgusting pleasures of underage flesh, the next there was a crack and he was sent reeling to the dirt floor. His face felt wet and stung as if a dime of salt had been spread over his wounds. What happened?

"Wha-"

His Query was halted as Gray beat him across the head again with the blunt shaft of the spear. It snapped with the force applied and the three feet of shaft that hadn't splintered from the impact flew and ricocheted off the dried mud wall of the hut next to the girl.

Gray flipped the flint spear again before jamming it down into and through the muscle of Sharif's right arm, pinning him to the floor.

Just as the scream of bloody murder was building in Sharif's lungs, Gray dropped to one knee and punched the downed raider in the throat. With the heavy breath of pain caught in the man's chest, the Courier reared back and dug the knuckledusters of his glove into the jaw of the suffocated Sharif.

Breaking it.

Confident that his prey was silenced for the moment, Gray stood, walked over to the corner of the hut and picked up the broken shaft of the spear. He turned back to see Sharif struggling blindly with the obstruction in his arm preventing him from fleeing. He pushed and pulled at it, moaning in pain as his damaged muscles protested against the movement. Gray raised his left boot and stomped down on the mans ribs. Sharif's bruised trachea would not allow him to properly scream, so instead a pained exhalation of air was the pathetic substitute. The armored courier seized the raiders' unpinned arm by the hand, Lifted it straight up, and swung the wooden shaft at the back of his elbow.

*Crunch* The joint now bent in all directions. Another pained exhalation.

Gray pulled his scimitar from its' sheathe and jammed it into the useless left limb, pinning it to the floor as well.

Exhale.

He mounted the now catatonic mans' chest, ignoring the froth foaming out of his mouth. He swung the beatstick down.

Exhale.

The stick rose.

Inhale.

It came down.

E-Exhale.

It rose.

In-Inha-

It fell.

Exh-

Rise.

In-

Fall.

Rise.

Fall.

Rise.

Fall.

Rise!

Fall!

Rise!

Fall!

RISE!

FALL!

RISE!

FALL!

 **RISE!**

 **FALL!**

 **RISE!**

 **FALL!**

 **RISE!**

 **FALL!**

It was only when Gray realized he was essentially pounding wet sand that he stopped. There was no head; Just an unrecognizable red pulp, mashed and mixed in with the dirt of the floor.

Finally satisfied, he got off the mutilated corpse and wiped off his bloodstained loves on the dead raiders discarded cotton pants.

'Hmm, why did this guy have his pants off again.' He heard a sniffle and a whimper behind him.

'Oh shit! The girl!'

Recognizing the delicacy of the situation, Gray slowly turned to face the girl. The already traumatized girl just huddled into a corner, coiling about herself to hide from the eerie green-.

Coiling.

'She… coiled herself.'

The cogs in Gray's mind ground to a halt as he recognized a rather large feature of the girl he had missed before.

Starting at the hips, skin melded and then changed into scale forming the tail of a short, but thick two meter long maroon serpent. Upon a much closer inspection, Gray identified some other odd inhuman features on the small creature. Cradling its' body were actually four arms, each pair of arms seemingly sharing a socket on each side. The slit pupils of its' eyes were surrounded by a sharp yellow iris, making a great contrast in comparison with the surrounding bloodshot sclera. Scaled elven ears pressed down against its' neck. As he slowly approached, the creature, it cowered into a smaller coil against the wall as if to try and shrink itself into nothing.

To anyone else, such a display of fear from such a neutral and young party would melt most hearts and disarm others, garnering sympathy. All it made Gray feel was caution and a massive amount of paranoia. Who's to say this creature didn't have some way of actually melting his heart out of his chest or having the strength, even with its' small size to actually rip his arms from his sockets. He didn't know what the fuck this 'girl' was, or any other kinda shit like that, but what he did know was that right now this 'girl', snake, hybrid thing was injured, scared, traumatized and most importantly, cornered. A cornered and injured animal.

No, animal wasn't the right terminology for this thing.

It was an _abomination_. A cornered and injured abomination. His past experiences with wasteland abominations were usually short, violent, painful, completely one-sided and always resulted in death. This would be no different. A quick- hell, just a casual pull of the 'Raging Bull' and this little encounter would be over and he could go about his business unhindered.

But it looked so… _human_ , and unlike those unholy monsters that populated the Mojave wasteland and feasted upon the flesh of whatever moved. No, this 'girl' was very different.

Past the bruised flesh, the skin of her upper half was smooth and the merge between human and serpent was seamless…natural. Her eyes, even through the fear that permeated her being, were so vibrant and alive, so full of _emotion_ ; unlike the blank eyes of all the wasteland abominations, that just marketed their mindless hunger and want for their next meal to satiate. Savage. No, this creature was aware; she was alive, just as alive as anyone else. She was also a child.

More pained screams and shouts filtered into the hut. 'Jesus, those fucks are still at it, I thought they would've moved on by now; cut off a couple of fingers, maybe a toe or two to make an example, then leave the brat alone. They must be doing some serious hyping.'

The hybrids' eyes locked on to the doorway, shivering even in the warm air of the evening. Gray took a step a closer and her eyes flicked back to him. Her eyes flicked back over to the scary green-eyed ghost man who had so brutally killed the monster man who had hurt her insides. She didn't want pain anymore no more hurt. I was bad. Pain bad. Hurt bad! No more!

Gray took another tentative step and a low sound, similar to a rush of air leaving a fire filtered through the receptors on his helmet. Another step. The noise got louder and the girl began to open her mouth. One more step had him within three arms length and a body. It was at this point that Gray connected the dots and realized that the hissing was in fact coming from the hybrid. 'Are those fa-'

The hissing from the girl grew to a fever pitch and her mouth yawned wider than humanly possible, enough to swallow a small animal whole. Two stubby but distinguishable fangs sprung forward and from her mouth came a stream of clear fluid. Going off reflex and practiced motion, Gray ducked below the sudden attack.

His receptors caught the sound of something sizzling. He looked back to see that the opposite mud wall beginning to melt into a steaming pile of sludge. As it were, some of the fluid also happened to land on the body of the deceased raider.

…

…

'Yeah, no.'

Gray stood up straight as he drew the 'Raging Bull'. The little abomination huddled in on itself, fear dominating her features once more.

"You can't pull that alone and afraid bullshit, right after you try and melt my face off."

"I-I'm sor-"

The discovery of the hybrid's ability to speak was overshadowed by the roaring echo of the .500 discharging in the small space of the shanty house. The little hybrids eyes were wide with shock and fear even through the bits and blood and tissue spilling over her eyes.

A body hit the floor.

Gray's eyes narrowed beneath his helmet, his revolver still trained on the corpse of the raider and the doorway the body rested in.

'Took too long.' Gray mused as excited and angry shouts filtered in through the doorway. Gray reached up and undid the clasps locking his helmet in place. He pulled it off, unveiling his face to the little hybrid. He looked at her.

Saying the hybrid had had a traumatic evening would be a massive understatement. A beating, rape, being passed around like a hot potato, another beating, being scarred for life at the sight of a someone's head being reduced to a pulp and being cornered in a small space with the scary green-eyed ghost man who did it. This however… this took the cake. He had to be a ghost man, because no one, not even scary-lady six arms, had a smile that wide; a smile so wide it literally traveled from ear to ear and was so uneven around the cheeks that it looked inhuman, _unnatural_. It looked _unwanted_ , like it was a parasitic mockery of the normal human feature. It looked… _forced_.

The hybrid fainted.

Gray atomitized in his right hand a syringe filled with a red-hued liquid. He knelt down next to the unconscious hybrid and jammed it into her neck. He depressed the plunger, emptying a quarter of the vial.

'That'll take care of some of her more immediate wounds. I'll let Guerra take a look at her later.

He undid several of his duster's body and leg straps before removing it and placing the body length coat over the hybrids body like a blanket. She was so small that even with the tauric body of a two meter serpent his duster still covered her from neck halfway down her tail. Gray left his helmet by the hybrid's head and ducked out of the door and back into the crisp, warm air of the evening breeze.

The sun was setting now and the last few rays of the evening light filtered through the rare desert cloud floating about in the sky. The rays of sunlight waltzed across the Courier Fives' face, traipsing over his empty eyes and placing delicate kisses along the gruesome scars of his mouth and cheeks.

'This feels… good.'

He was so lost in the beauty of the untainted. That when he finally took notice of the numerous and consistent movement in his peripheral that he acknowledged the 200+ raiders surrounding him in a half circle. 'The fuck did these guys come from?' The raiders gave menacing glares, snickering and patting their weapons in an attempt to intimidate what in their eyes was an older teen wearing a grown mans armor. Considering the context of who they were trying to intimidate, it was a rather pitiful attempt. A raider stepped forward. It was the scar-faced man who had been making examples, his blank left eye, glared at Gray in coalition with his right. His face was set in a frown and unlike the other majority of the other raiders he looked at Gray with a suspicious eye. "Boy!" The raider lieutenant shouted.

'I could've swore that they had a couple more guys than that?' Gray looked past the semi-circle of men to see the other hundred men armed with spears, still standing around the corral of children. The archers however were missing; in fact, there weren't any archers in sight, none on the rooftops, none with arrows notched and pointed in his general direction. Just a few bows and arrows scattered randomly along the sand. His eyes caught the silhouette of a shimmering figure stalking its way towards the unsuspecting backs of the raiders guarding the corral of children.

"BOY!" The lieutenant shouted once again this time gaining the attention of the dazed Courier.

Gray's head listed to the side. "Sup."

"Are you responsible for the men at your feet."

Gray took a glance at his Pip-Boy before taking a seat next to the corpse of the raider who he stabbed in the neck. "Oh you mean this guy, yeah no don't worry 'bout this guy, he's alright, ain't cha' buddy." He patted and jostled the dead raider as if to get a response. "Oh well he's A-okay, I assure you the other guys too, y'know. They're just taking a nap." He glanced at his Pip-Boy again.

"For attacking the warriors of Lord Sabal, rightful ruler of the desert and all its' holdings I, Duran of the Southern Sands, sentence you to death. Surrender and it may be painless." His men laughed.

The Courier took note of the bloody sword clutched in the raider Lieutenants' right hand. "That isn't a very convincing pitch you know. Lemme show you how to pitch a deal to someone."

Gray reclined against the corpse beside him. "In light of the heinous crimes you and your men have committed in the past 20 minutes, I am willing to let t all pass and forget most of what has happened here if you pack up right now and leave. See? Now that's how you pitch a deal to someone."

Duran barked out a crude laugh, his face not reflecting his actions. "You're going to forget? Why would I honestly give even half a Grok turd if you fucking forgot you ugly, insignificant little shit stain."

Gray frowned, taking the dagger embedded in the dead raiders' neck with him as he stood. "You know… you're really starting to remind me of someone I didn't like."

He glanced down at his Pip-Boy one last time before looking past the raiders. "Guerra leave me this one OK? Go ahead and take the rest."

To the raiders it seemed as though the teen wasn't talking to anyone in particular. The majority of the raiders guffawed at the 5th Courier, amused with his ramblings. "The baby boy must be afflicted with some pretty serious desert fever!" The semi-circle of men howled with laughter. "Maybe he's calling to his bastard of a father!" The men roared again, all except for the skeptic lieutenant.

Duran looked around the village realizing for the first time, that he didn't see a single one of the archers he had set on overwatch. 'Explains how the little shit was able to peruse around the village so easily. The man looked past his wall of men, to where he left the rest of his soldiers to guard their hostages; they were looking at him. He looked past them as well. His stomach fell.

Standing in front of his hostages was another figure dressed in a thick ankle-length overcoat. The torso-armor of the figure looked exactly like the one the teen with the forced smile was wearing, albeit without the random splotches of rust and tarnish. Bandoliers partially concealed beneath the overcoat contained otherworldly looking munitions and small blades. Hellish glowing red eyes projected the figures' ill-intent towards the backs of the soldiers on guard duty. Then he took notice of the strange, but painfully familiar 4 foot piece of metal and wood cradled in the figures arm.

In the following second when the idea to warn his soldiers of the danger standing only a few yards behind them finally entered his panic stricken mind, Guerra had already pulled the trigger.

His voice was drowned out by a sudden flood of chemical noise pollution, unnatural, cruel and akin to the sound of layers upon layers of wool fabric ripping. Guerra raked 'The Spray' to the left.

The following second brought the sight. The sight of the blissfully unaware men suddenly jerking and spazzing about as if they were amidst the middle of some sporadic dance. 100 men collapsed motionless.

The semi-circle of raiders were now staring at the figure armored black and green who had mowed a quarter of their number in a matter of seconds. The red optics of the figure glared balefully at the limp corpses before turning their hateful gaze onto the rigid forms of the raiders only twenty yards away. Both barrels of the still smoking gun followed with the intent to rectify the issue of the whole living breathing thing the raiders seemed afflicted with. The sixth courier pulled the trigger again and 'The Spray' released its' contents onto the hapless sheep that had thought themselves the wolves.

They were sheared to the bone. With the oversized LMG propped against his hip he raked his fire from left to right, piecing apart every raider he passed over. He released the trigger for a moment as he reached the middle before depressing the trigger again as he finally reached the other end of the semi-circle.

Duran blinked, coming out of his spell of fear-induced shock when he realized that he had been spared. He glanced down and regretted the decision immediately. It was the body of one of his men, some faceless hoodlum placed under his command for this raid.

Now he was literally faceless, all that was left was a meat pie with some holes in it. The limbs were splayed all about in a haphazard fashion, as if the body had just tumbled down a hill. The smell of melting brass and acrid smoke that filled the air, the wounds on the bodies, just like before…

"Lieutenant Duran", a voice called from the pile of bodies to his left. Duran tore his eyes from the gruesome remains of the dead man on the ground, with some phantasmal hope that his ears were not lying to him and someone aside from the two demons on either side of him was still alive. To his surprise one of his soldiers, one of the younger much more innocent conscripts, Spiffa, if he remembered correctly, _was_ still standing completely unscathed aside from being flecked with the blood of his comrades. His wide eyes looked towards Duran as if he was the first light, he had seen after a life in the dark. Lieutenant Duran, I'm-"

The conscripts face imploded, just before his skull exploded all over the sand, giving it a grisly topping of blood, bone and gray matter.

"Dead."

Gray lowered the barrel of the "Raging Bull'. "You are dead, very much so, and to be honest you probably would have been dead a few minutes ago if a certain mailman didn't shoot like Old Lady Gibson!"

Guerra loosed his grip, resting 'The Spray' on his hip and letting the strap on his opposite shoulder bear its weight. "Motherfucker, Old Lady Gibson could pop a cap off a bottle from 30 feet away using a shotgun; A sawed-off shotgun at that. Also how about a thank you Guerra for saving me the effort of having to kill 300+ people by hand and pistol, all the while using the body of a scrawny teenager, hmm? How about one of those, instead of bitching at me for missing one person while using a weapon called 'The Spray'.

"How 'bout a fuck you instead? Will that work for ya?"

The Courier 6 just shook his head and walked away. "Don't take too long. If you hurry I might just have a present for you."

"Oh goody I just love presents!"

The Courier 5 looked to the still Lieutenant, still staring at the body of the fallen raider.

"So, Duran was it."

"You… You're a monster! You and the Red Eyes, both of you are monsters!"

Gray snorted, "Pot calling the kettle blacker than Lanius' non-existent heart. Also correcto-mundo Einstein, though 'Red Eyes', as you call him is substantially more sensitive to being call that than I am. Anyway back on topic, I am going to kill you. That is a given. What is still in your control however, is how you die. You can die on your own two feet like a man, or you can die begging on your own two knees like a sniveling little bitch. My sniveling little bitch."

"Why… you arrogant, cocky, little _shit_!" Duran growled as he charged the idle courier.

Gray chuckled lowly as he adjusted his stance backwards and holstered the 'R.B'.

Duran pulled his left arm back for a massive haymaker and leapt forward, fully intent on wiping the smug look off the little shits' face. Unfortunately for Duran the smug look persisted as Gray ducked down and drove his armored shoulder up into the stomach of the oncoming body, checking the lieutenant into the sand.

Duran wheezed as his back hit the ground and the breath was crushed from his lungs. He had but a moment of reprieve before Gray's plated boot arced its' way into his side with a dull *thud*. Duran rolled away and hastily regained his footing, wincing with every breath. He eyed the scar-faced teen warily as he cradled his side, the twisted smile on the little shits face still present. Fuck that smile.

Duran reached to his hip and drew his scimitar from its' sheathe. He rolled his wrist with patient anticipation. This time he would wait, rushing in wouldn't gain him anything except a quick and brutal death. He caught his breathe and forced the pain down and away, assuming an open stance and goading the teen forward with a free hand.

"For someone who talks a lot of shit, you're being a passive little bitch! Guess I know what that big mouth is actually good for huh." Duran knew he had struck gold when the smug look finally vanished off the teens face. "Is that it? Huh, is that it faggot?" Grays' face was a blank slate as he started walking towards the now smirking raider. 'Just a little bit closer, and I'll wipe that twisted smile off the shit stains' face permanently. Fuck it, I'll take his whole head!' It was as Gray approached the edge of Durans' reach that the larger man stabbed forward towards the teens' throat.

The fifths' right vambrace intercepted the blade, pushing it up and to the right, away from his neck. His left hand snaked forward affirming a crushing grip on the man's' throat and dragging him face to face with an unamused Courier. "I'll show you passive."

It was about this time Duran's' cracked rib gently chided him for his behavior, reminding him what happened only minutes prior and how he should probably not aggravate the kid who was obviously not a regular kid.

Gray wrenched downward and threw his knee up into Duran's' gut, once, twice, and thrice before tossing his head back and bringing his forehead into Duran's nose pushing it sideways. He followed the headbutt with a stiff right elbow to the jaw, breaking his own grip and opening up the staggered raider for a roundhouse to the side.

Reeling Duran reared back his scimitar for a swing at Gray's head. Gray stepped forward with a strong right cross towards the center of the man's chest, rolling his shoulder and ducking his head. With the synthetic and natural strength behind the solid punch, along with the 400+ pounds of mass held within his body, the knuckledusters leading the straight dug themselves into Duran's thoracic, crushing his sternum and slipping down into his solar plexus. Duran's swing lost strength and clattered harmlessly against Gray's armored side before the sword and its' owner crumpled to the sandy ground.

Pain. Duran made an attempt to stand before his ribcage, completely P.O'd with its' owners recent decisions not so kindly told him to fuck off. With every breath he managed to struggle through his mauled diaphragm, the pain just tripled as he was forced to exhale. 'Uggh, oh fuck *cough*cough*,' the raider lieutenant moaned. So much fucking **PAIN**.

Gray chuckled lowly as he walked a small circle around the raider lieutenant. "Well would you look at who's the passive bitch now? Already down on his knees and assuming the position."

He kneeled down till he was nearly face to face with the downed man. "Down on your knees. You're a third of the way to being my bitch, bitch."

Duran snarled in between his erratic gasps for breath, pawing at the bandolier along his chest for his spare dagger.

"Are you looking for something?"

Duran lifted his head only to be met with sudden pain. Blinding pain. In the literal sense. His sight in his right eye went black and he managed to struggle out a strangled cry falling onto his back and unwillingly delving into back into a rough fit of hacking and coughing. He clutched at his socket, clawing at his face for whatever had or still was causing him pain; he found only air and the sticky wetness of blood covering his own cheek.

A light thud on the sand prompted the wounded lieutenant to open his one good eye. Just to his left was a 10" serrated dagger glistening with his life liquid. Wrapped several time about the handle was a worn cloth specked with red. It looked… familiar, incredibly so. Actually it looked a lot like-

Duran renewed his self search of his bandolier. It was missing. His own dagger was missing. Had he been blinded by his own blade?

Gray perked up as he noticed the cogs of realization turning in the downed mans' head. "I think that's yours. You should probably try and keep a better grip on your goods my boy."

He _had_ been blinded by his own blade. At some point in their one sided scuffle, this monstrous little shit stain had taken his knife and then stabbed him with it. In the eye. He had effectively been disarmed, disabled and stabbed in the _fucking eye_! By an edgy teen not even remotely dressed for the desert. In the fucking _**EYE**_!

'WTF! No, what in the actual flying fuck! Fuck today! First I wake up to the shit stains I call my kids, crying up a fucking storm, a whole three hours before dawn break! Then just as I manage to shut them the fuck up; just as I'm about to go back to fucking sleep, one of Sabals' lackeys comes knocking at my fucking door, prattling on about his sons first conquest, and the shit stain having serfs of his own and all sorts of crap like that.'

Duran winced and grit his teeth to brace against the waves of pain crashing against his nerve centers. 'Then after commanding that I somehow managed the miracle task of organizing 800 men and boys into a raiding force within the span of an hour, the pudgy little fuck has the nerve to tell me that his shit stain is going to lead the actual raid and I'm just to _advise_.'

The raider wheezed, clawing at the sand in great handfuls as he rolled onto his side, struggling with a loss of breath. 'And when I " _advise_ " the little shit to go take owner some small settlement, something much more manageable for a first timer, something closer to the shithole I call home does he listen? NO, of course he doesn't, instead the cocky little shit wants something bigger. A larger tribe he ' **heard** ' about, with no proof it existed aside from the word of some raggedy-as-fuck Bedouin "merchant" who obviously spent too much time in the fucking sun!

Against his will, tears began to well up in the corners of the man's eyes. A pained sob escaped the scarred man and his hands tightened into fists packing tight the sand within his grasp. 'So after a days worth of travel through the fucking sand, in the fucking sun, I come to discover we're subjugating a village filled to the fucking brim with even more shit-stains! Then he tells me to make examples…why? WHY? Actually why? None of them had so much as even a single hair on their face, none of them did anything to provoke us, nothing! They were shit-stains; but they were innocent shit-stains.

Little… fucking… kids. God who knows what some of those sick fucks did while I wasn't looking. I know at least some of them were a little twitchy, but I would've been more selective if I had more fucking time.'

"Now you are two-thirds of the way to being my bitch, just one step left."

Duran growled as he glared at Gray with malice so intense it could have burned two neat holes through the boys' head. His right hand crept forward towards the bloodied dagger resting in the sand.

'Then there is _this_ motherfucker. I don't even fucking know how this fucker is real! He looks like a little ass boy; maybe a bit older, like his balls dropped a week ago or something. But no adolescent or newly pubescent brat should be able to break bones based on their own fucking strength!

…

…

Maybe.

Maybe this is what I deserve- for fucking up something that could've and should've been left alone. I should've been a better leader, I should've had the balls to challenge that dumbass's bullshit authority. I should've been a lot of things. A lot of things I'm not. But if there is one thing I'm sure I am…

Duran pushing through the crippling pain in his chest hurled the fist full of sand within his left hand, the spray finding its way into the fifth couriers' eyes. Duran's right hand took a firm hold of the dagger in front of him and made a vicious stab upwards towards Gray's chin.

" _ **I AIN'T NO BITCH!**_ " Duran roared.

All things considered, it was an admirable act of defiance only lessened by the fact that his defiance was against someone who looked to be 10+ years his minor. Taking into consideration how Gray was 100+ years Duran's elder, the fact the raider even got the blade off the ground was a feat in itself.

The possibility of the large knife reaching its' intended target however, was surely and utterly impossible. Duran's knife hand was halted halfway, by a downwards block from the seemingly unaffected Gray. The kneeling raider recoiled at the eerie smile plastered beneath the painfully red and manic eyes of the teen.

"Time for step three…"

Gray reaffirmed his grip on the raiders wrist, pivoting on his back foot and slugging him in the jaw as he arm dragged the larger man, face first, into the ground. Duran struggled for a moment, before a boot stomped down on his shoulder and his wrist was forcefully rotated to the point of dislocation.

Duran grit his teeth as his grip on the knife loosened and the dagger once again landed in front of his face, blade down handle up. Tears of denial ran down his face, mixing with his blood on the sand along with his muffled muttering of grief. "I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry, I'm so-"

Gray's boot stomped down on the remorseful raiders skull sending him into a fitful and tortured unconsciousness. "No respite for the wicked, Bitch."

Gray lifted his boot off of the quiet raiders face and released his wrist. He patted down Duran's pockets for any other hidden weapons or miscellaneous items of value. As it were, there was a miscellaneous item of interest in his left pocket; a flat oval-shaped locket of tarnished brass, just large enough to fit the palm.

As he sat down next to Duran's idle body, he drew the R.B once more and pressed the double action to the back of Duran's head. Before the instinctual action of pulling the trigger could process, he felt the urge to take a closer look at his acquired souvenir, and the only object of value on the raiders' person. With a click the latch holding it shut was undone and it flipped upward exposing its' contents.

Gray paused, slipping his finger from the trigger and resting it on the guard. He took a minutes glance at the locket before shifting his gaze over to the raider. He withdrew the "Raging Bull and rested his hands on his lap, taking glances at the locket every few seconds. He looked over at the hues the setting sun cast on the sparse clouds decorating the horizon.

It was a beautiful evening.

He finally stood, holstering the 'Raging Bull' and pocketing the locket. He atomitized two pairs of hand cuffs; one pair secured the lieutenants' hands behind his back while the other locked his ankles together. 'Guerra will probably want some information out of one these fucks. I guess it'd be best to keep this one breathing; probably knows more than the others.'

But even as he moved to start checking the mouths and pockets of the other dead raiders for anything valuable, a sentence kept repeating itself in his mind; The voice was crude, harsh and vaguely feminine, but he would give anything to see the owners face once more.

" _Jesus Christ you're so fucking soft!"_

"I guess I still am mom."

A warm breeze caressed his weathered face, bits of sand and grit caught in the liquid around his eyes.

"I guess I still am."

* * *

 **So... yeah, that all just happened. Yup. So the third chapter is finished. Completed. Done. It's a done deal, and now I get to do the fun task of finishing #4, revising it and the other couple of fics I have sitting arou- I mean... what? Said what about other fics in the works? No, your silly. No, I didn't spell you're wrong, stop being a Punctuation Nazi.** **Liked the chapter? If ya did, please leave a review, they really do motivate us writers to keep on tip-tap'ing at a keyboard. If you saw you something with room for improvement, tell me what I could do to make my writing better, thanks for your time and have a good day.**


	4. Chapter 4

**I... I have nothing to say. Or rather there is nothing I can say to explain why it took so long to get this chapter out. There was... a lot of different stuff sure: losing the original draft for this chapter and having to rewrite it, college, For Honor, procrastination, other story ideals, a lack of motivation. I actually was planning on making this chapter even longer, but after some choice decision, I have posted what I have here. There is more, there was more, but I had no way to implement into the story and not take another 3-6 months. What can ya do, but learn and live? On the plus side writing this chapter and everything else that spurred into my mind was incredibly enjoyable, fun and personally I believe improved my writing capability a fair bit.**

 **So without further adieu, let's get this started...**

* * *

Hard to Kill

Chapter 4: Dry Rot

" _It's one thing for an hombre to spill blood, it's another to savor it. Seek it. Changes you in a way that not even you yourself can predict. I learned that the hard way, with more blood than I could handle. It's a shame Vato seis didn't have a choice. Cinco was a lost cause from the start."_

 _-Raul_

xxxxxx

 _I honestly never expected much from the little farm mouse I jacked. Maybe a little bit of jet, some grape-flavored mentats, a couple of stimpacks, hell maybe even some E cells or MFC. Never figured out what either of those stood for._

 _Who knew a couple shots of psycho, med-x_ _,_ _and some buffout tabs could turn a brat into a fucking monster._

 _Wait, fuck am I talking about? Delko OD'd like a bitch on psycho and jet last week and tried to eat Canaan's face. Wish I was the one to put a hole in his head. Pussy owed me 50 caps. What was I thinking about again? Oh yeah the kid. Damn, did he fucking bitch and moan and cry and shit._

 _Fuck, it was annoying._

 _Had to clock the little shit to get him to shut the fuck up and even then he would whine every other minute. G-Rated Pistol whips can only do so much and I didn't want to damage the goods too badly. One of the guys at the vault, Marco, had put out a bounty for a virgin, and he was willing to pay a pretty stiff cap to whoever could fulfill his contract._

 _As soon as I got to the hideout, I showed Marco the goods and gave him a fairly decent price_ _;_ _either 5 jet inhalers or 200 caps_ _—_ _somewhere in the middle would be alright as well. This motherfucker who had clearly stated that he wanted a fucktoy not even 5 days prior_ _,_ _gets pissy because_ _ **apparently**_ _I didn't get him what he wanted. Him getting pissy made me get pissy, because I explicitly remember him saying said he wanted a "virgin" and I fucking delivered._

" _I wanted a girl."_

 _I still didn't see the problem; the little shit didn't even have nose hair_ _ **and**_ _had two holes to fuck. Four if you counted the eyes. Just throw a little dress on there and TA-DAAH! An adorable_ _,_ _100% fuckable little girl_ _;_ _just imagine that that little thing down stairs is a disturbingly large and mutated clitoris! Yeah, radiation will do that to people! There we go! Contract completed_ _;_ _gimme my fucking drugs!_

 _B_ _eing the suave son-ova-bitch that I am_ _, I_ _went ahead and told him such. This motherfucker tells me to stick it where it fits_ _,_ _and toss the kid in the 'cage' where I might actually get something for my time and effort. Now_ _,_ _looking back_ _,_ _he was probably being sarcastic, but holy shit was it fucking ingenious._

 _Watching dogs kill each other was fairly entertaining; watching a dog try not to get ripped apart by a pack of molerats was fucking hilarious. It was the same deal with humans, only better. Two people in an enclosed space, forced to fight under the threat of death made for a show; a man forced to gouge out his brothers eyes was abso-fucking-lutely HILARIOUS._

 _All that crying and shit._

 _So why not toss the little farm mouse into the pits and make some quick caps? Sure it would be a rather small cut of that night's purse, but it would be better than nothing. Hell, depending on how big the cut was, it might've been worth it_ _to_ _go ahead and put actual effort towards jacking a few more mice in the next couple of raids. Rinse, repeat,_ _and_ _get rich as fuck._

 _Only issue was what I would toss the mouse in the cage with? No one else had a mouse in storage, cuz' no one saw value in having a kid. Rather, no one who trafficked human product saw any reason to throw a mouse into the snakes den when things like the sex trade and slave labor existed. I had heard some rumors about a place out east that was a hub for slave trade and such; it was called Pittsville. Or was it Pothole? Crater? Something like that._

 _Then someone else came up with the idea of tossing the kid in with one of the mongrels. I swear_ _,_ _mentat junkies are a fucking blessing. So after bringing Warden, who runs the fights, down to the 'Cages' holding area, I show him the goods and give him the pitch._

 _He says no._

" _No?! The fuck you mean, "No!" Why not?!"_

" _Because I'm not going to waste my time and caps to essentially feed a wild dog. It's also not necessarily entertaining, as much as it is disappointing to watch a kid that can't even tie his own shoes get his throat ripped out. I'd rather not set myself up for disappointment."_

 _Entertainment? That was his issue? Really?_

" _Entertaining? Warden don't you worry your lil' skull wearing head. I'll make that shit entertaining. Trust me. Just put the kid in." He glanced in the mouse's direction. The brat was huddled in on himself, sniffling and wiping away at the tears spilling from his puffy eyes._

 _Pathetic._

 _Warden seemed to think so as well. "This kid is an actual waste of fucking time. I don't even think he'd make it to the arena. Might trip on his laces and land on something sharp. " He looked back to me. "This kid is a waste of time. This kid is a waste of_ _ **my**_ _time_ _,_ _Thresh. Why are you wasting yours and more importantly, mine own time? Do you think I'm stupid?"_

 _Well that's an easy question._

" _No_ _;_ _I think you are a couple steps from being a full-fledged retard_ _. B_ _ut trust me when I say_ _that_ _throwing the kid into the Cage is_ _ **not**_ _a financially retarded thing to do." Warden sucked on his teeth and tilted his head. "Ok… Fine. You want to see the little shit have his tongue ripped out through his ass? No problem, I can get that set up no fucking problem."_

 _I smiled._

" _On one condition."_

 _I frowned._

" _If the kid doesn't last more than 30 seconds, you owe me 300 caps for the wasted bracket that could've been filled with something much more entertaining than some sniveling piss ant."_

 _I hesitated._

 _But only for a moment. 300 caps was a stiff cap but technically_ _,_ _even if the kid did get killed, as long as he lasted 30 seconds I'd get my cut of the night's purse and overall the turnout would be worth it. That night I stood in the holding area, minutes from sending the wimpy little shit to what would be a brutal_ _,_ _albeit humorous_ _,_ _death. I had no doubt that unless Warden matched the mouse up with a puppy he would die within the first 10 seconds of stepping foot in the cage. That whole 10 second death issue however, could possibly be solved by this wonderfully monstrous little concoction I had in my right hand._

 _Half a vial of Med-x, two buffout tablets_ _,_ _banana yucca as a catalyst, mixed into a large syringe of psycho; I call it "Slasher". The question now was how much to give the mouse. I'm definitely no doctor, but I was positive that_ _,_ _considering his size, not even a quarter of the syringe could be considered 'safe'_ _;_ _much less the whole thing. Maybe 1/10 of the syringe would be ok? Warden was only going to be putting the mouse in the cage with some mangy_ _,_ _flea- bitten mongrel, so the syringe should let the kid last the 30 seconds necessary for me to get my cut. Then the door on the other side of the cage open_ _ed_ _and in_ _came_ _this fuck huge giant wolf-dog thing._

 _Fucking what?!_

 _The kid was supposed to be fighting some old hound, not the biggest fucking mutt in stock! Christ_ _,_ _did they get Violet to put one of her demon spawn on loan or what? A thought suddenly hit me; was that motherfucker Warden actually expecting me to pay him if the kid got killed earlier than the time we set? No, this was his way of bringing customers back; if blood was going to be shed, let it be shed in excess._

 _Well fuck that, cuz' that shit wasn't happening._

 _I looked down at the little farm mouse next to me. He's staring at the fuck huge mutt, shivering and shaking, tears making tracks through the thin layers of dirt and grime on his face. I took a glance at the Slasher. The kid was only up to my waist. Any more than half could cause the mouse to just tip over and die._

 _But…_

 _I took the kid by the arm_ _,_ _yanking it up above his head and giving me a clear shot at the treasure vein at the joint. I jammed_ _the_ _syringe_ _in_ _, and depressed_ _the plunger all the way down. With that done_ _,_ _I shoved the kid through into the arena and shut the door._

 _What followed was one of the most brutal slaughters I have seen in forever._

 _At first_ _,_ _all the kid did was kinda… twitch. He shook. He writhed. He foamed like Mirelurk ready for a meal. He cried like a mother at her firstborn's funeral. Then he roared like a tortured beast_ _,_ _unbound by chains of molten slag._ _"_ _Fuck Huge_ _",_ _goaded forth by the mouse trying to pull his best Grognak impression, snarled, barked and howled before tearing its' way across the cage. It lunged at the mouse's neck, mouth wide and ready to chomp the shit out of the small moving thing in front of it._

 _The kid did the fucking same; with the benefit of having arms, along with a strength and rage inducing drug directing a hate rally in his brain and running red hot vitriol through his bloodstream. The mouse ducked down beneath the lunge and shoulder tackled the dog into the concrete floor._ _It_ _snarled in pain, snapping its' thick jaws at the back of the kids neck_ _. Despite_ _tearing flesh and drawing blood,_ _the wound wasn't_ _serious enough_ _to free itself from the raging child's pin. The little monster didn't even acknowledge the lacerating bites, instead reaching up and stiff arming the dog's face into the ground. His small hand could barely fasten a grip around the dog's muzzle, but_ _he_ _nonetheless managed. Having subdued the larger creature the mouse lifted his head,_ _his bloodshot eyes glaring down at the growling quarry beneath him, foaming_ _mouth agape and losing a froth of saliva and spittle_ _._

 _The kid reared his head back and drove his face into the tough hide of the dogs' neck. Despite the mouse having a mouthful of small, blunt teeth, he made slow and bloody progress gnawing at the dogs' jugular. First the skin was nicked, then lacerated as the kid tore into Fuck Huges' neck; then there was blood_ _—_ _a lot of blood_ _—_ _as he ripped his way through muscle and fibers and pockets of lean fat, ignoring the kicks, struggles and odd whimpers of the dying dog._

 _More blood,_ _ **lots**_ _more blood. Like the kid had found a stash of liquid gold. Fuck Huges' struggles became weaker, its whimpers quieter, and the intervals between each expression of pain being spaced further apart as the seconds ticked by._

 _The kid was visibly in the dog's neck now_ _;_ _still ripping and tearing, he pulled his head back_ _,_ _taking with him a great majority of the dog's throat, the red masses of flesh and tissue filling his mouth to the brim. His face was painted a stark crimson; the rabid mouse's face being coated with the thick arterial blood of the dog's carotid. His teeth were stained red and his eyes_ _wide and manic,_ _uncaring_ _of the foreign liquid invading his sockets._

 _Fuck Huge was still and silent, possibly an attempt at mimicking the crowd_ _who were_ _too shocked to process what the fuck had just occurred before them. The grin on my face coulda' stretched for miles. Slasher was effective alright._

 _The kid_ _ **swallowed**_ _before burrowing back into the dogs pitted throat._

… _Maybe it was a little too effective…_

 _Growls and grunts sounded out from the mouse turned monster as_ _ **it**_ _ate its way through the dead animal's neck; through skin, through muscle, through bone, through muscle and through skin once again. The kid stood, warm blood dripping from his face and hands. The small Brahmin hide overalls and dirty T-shirt were stained a dark maroon, blood soaking throughout both articles of clothing._

 _His bloody brown eyes scanned his mute audience over with a feral suspicion, before roaring at the crowd, a viscous red flem flying from his maw. He raised his hands above his head and displayed his trophy. The dogs head._

'… _Maybe I coulda' cut down on the dose a little bit?'_

 _The kid slipped his fingers inside the mouth of the decapitated hound, taking a hold of the upper and lower jaw. With a sickening snap he wrenched the two apart, sending either half of the skull to opposites sides of the cage. The kid roared again._

 _The crowd erupted with cheers and whoops at the show of violence. Even Warden was off to the side pumping his fist and shouting in tandem with the rest of the crowd._

' _Nah.'_

* * *

 _As it were, Warden was so impressed with the kid, that he requested him for the next night, then the following night, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that- Caps had never come so easy!_

 _However after a few months the amount of people who came to each fight started to peak. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it meant less caps were coming in. Less caps meant less chems, and that was a big no-no. So one night Warden decided to make things a little bit more interesting._

 _I was somewhat surprised when he called the mouse up for first fight of the night. Usually he saved the kid for last, to end the night with a quick exciting and bloody finish. Even stranger was the fact that he matched the kid up against a single gecko. Not a fire gecko, not a golden gecko or one of those weird acid-spitting geckos from up north. Just a regular 3' tall bug eyed, razor toothed desert reptile that was now locked in a cage with a 10 year-old child, one ounce from overdosing on pain meds and neural stimulant; The predator of the two would surprise an unknowing onlooker._

 _The gecko hissed and bared its sawtooth fangs at the staggered human before it rearing its head and leveling its tail for balance. The mouse's immediate reaction as per usual post injection was to foam, cry and snivel. He collapsed to his knees and the screaming started. The gecko seeing the display of weakness took advantage and charged across the ring to its supposed prey. The thing about geckos was that they weren't particularly dangerous unless they were in packs, and considering how the kid had torn through a fully grown fire gecko before, well…_

 _15 seconds later the kid was gnawing on the geckos left leg, the rest of the small mutant's body strewn about the cage._

 _I was honestly kind of disappointed. 'Well that was a waste of time. Now I gotta wait till a night's worth of slasher flushes itself out of the kids system. I don't even think it's accurate to call that little monster a child anymore.' Whatever, as long as that… thing, chewing on a gecko's foot in the arena kept winning and kept bringing in the caps I didn't care. If Warden wanted to give me easy caps and save me the effort of feeding the kid for the next couple of days I was ok with that._

 _Then the cage gate opened and two carriers were brought to the entrance. Their doors swung open and from each came a gecko, charging at the boy mouths wide and hissing. 20 seconds later and the little monster was working a geckos' eyeball down his gullet before digging his fingers into a socket of the adjacent corpse. The arena gate opened, followed by more hissing._

 _A horrific imitation of a smile creeped its' way out of the little monsters gruesome maw, painted a dark crimson and decorated with pieces of flesh, fresh and rotten._

 _It was right then that I started having second thoughts about what I was doing to this kid. Something about that… look. There was something in that look that was beyond inhuman. It was… mindless, blind to what was around it. Do keep in mind that this was a 10 something year-old_ _ **child**_ _. Admittedly drugged out of his mind, into a red haze of rage and violence, but still! Where was the whiny little shit from 6 months ago; the one that only responded to that weird southern name? What did that little shit call himself? Gerry? No it was something with an 'uh' sound. George? G-Fuck it! It was something that started with a G._

 _Of course, since I was higher than a lightweight on cave fungus, all these troubling thoughts were smothered out by 4 puffs of carbonated cow shit. So instead of worrying, I instead tossed my fist in the air and hooted & hollered with the rest of the crowd. Before the night was out, the kid had gone through over 50 geckos and at one point had taken on and killed 10 all at once. _

_The little monster had survived the night with more than a few gecko bites to the body with a rather nasty bite to his right shoulder. Luckily enough the remnants of the slasher was working its way through his system, visibly scabbing up and closing the smaller injuries, while slowly mending the torn sinews of his shoulder._

 _After the telltale crying that signified the monster had gone under and the mouse had resurfaced I put him back in his cage and let him vomit out everything he had devoured in a corner somewhere. He did that every couple of days or so. When I finally came off my high, I talked to Warden and expressed to him just how displeased I was with him throwing my investment through a fucking gauntlet without telling me first. Then he told me that he had in fact grossed a total of 2000 in caps and chems and how I was going to get a 40% cut._

 _The little voice in my head, the one from earlier, came forward with a fierce vigor protesting and demanding an end to this cruelty and madness. Strangely enough there wasn't any sort of resistance from my ego's opposite and when I tuned in to_ _ **other**_ _side to see what was up, it simply said, 'argue 50'._

 _So I did._

" _50% and you can use the kid every fucking night for all I care."_

 _Warden smiled with a disgusting mouth of yellow and black, like a static bee hive tending to the honey within their combs. "I'll do you one better. 40% of the night's purse-"_

" _I don't see how that's-"_

" _And 60% of the chems used as payment."_

' _Well you can fuck right off conscious; drugs and money wins the day.' "Deal."_

* * *

 _The bee hive expanded and its keeper extended a hand to the man with the monsters' leash. "This kid is going to make us a pair of very wealthy people."_

 _Thresh took the outstretched hand with and produced an ugly smile of his own. "Yes he will, as long as you keep to your end of the deal."_

" _Heh." Warden snatched his hand out of the drug fiend's grip and looked at the near comatose child in the pen. "As the long as the kid makes it in and out the cage in mostly one piece, then you'll get your cut. What you should be concerned about is if the kid is going to make it to the cage at all; doesn't even look like he can stand on his own two feet, much less rip a throat. How much longer is he gonna hold out?"_

" _As long as I fucking want him to or until he dies."_

" _Does he have a name?"_

 _Thresh gave the battle master an odd look. "Yeah, he does. Do I remember it? No. Nor do I care about it or can I possibly pronounce it? It was some weird southern name. Started With a… R or a C or something; maybe a G? Why do you care anyway?"_

 _Warden kneeled down next to the cage. "No reason in particular. Something of a mix between my own curiosity and simply giving the crowd a name to cheer for. Since you don't have one in mind why don't you let me have a go, hmm?"_

 _Thresh snorted as he left the holding area. "I didn't give enough fucks to care in the first place. Have at it."_

 _Warden looked back down at the boy, supine and drooling a small puddle on the floor of his cage. He stuck a hand between the bars and poked the boys' face, searching for any signs of life. All he did was jostle the boys' cheek and earn himself a finger covered in saliva. He smiled and pulled his glistening finger back, before bringing it to his mouth and sucking it clean._

 _He shivered with twisted delight, "Oh yeesss! Thresh has brought us quite the treat, hasn't he." Warden chuckled as he clutched the boys' jaw. "Thresh thinks your due date is just around the corner, but I don't. I think-no- I know that you're going to keep fighting, keep winning, keep killing. Isn't that right?" The fiend nodded the boys head up and down. "That's right. You'll keep on killing, just for me…" Warden ran a finger down the boys' cheek and over his lips as he stood up and walked towards the door._

" _Won't you, my little monster."_

 _Guerra stared blankly at the far wall. Eyes damp with sorrowed tears._

* * *

 _xxxxxx_

Guerra had seen many things in his lifetime.

He been many place, met many different people, _lived_ many cultures, and he was happy to have to been fortunate enough to experience all of it. Of course not everything he had experienced had been sunshine and roses, as would be expected of someone who lived day to day in a nuclear apocalypse. He had seen and felt the worst of humankind. He had experienced their greed, tasted their hate, walked through the black and rotted remnants of their petty conflicts, and bore the scars of the shameless pride so common with the Old World and even the remnants living in the new.

He had seen humanity at its best. He had seen humans show great, almost impossible compassion for one another. He had met a melting pot of communities and personalities, a variety of different healers, and vigilantes across the continental U.S. People struggling just as hard as the next to get by, but still extending an open hand of kindness to those in need with whatever they had available. Guerra himself was fortunate enough to have fallen into more welcoming and open hands during some of his darker moments traveling across the ruins of the U.S. It was also a nice plus that his hosts were so open with the intricacies of their various remedies and arts allowing him to add more methods of healing and other skills to his own repertoire. He didn't remember when exactly he wanted to become a doctor; He honestly didn't remember much before he took the job to deliver the platinum chip. But he did remember the doctors who helped him recover from… recover… from something… something he couldn't remember, some kind of misery, some kind of pain mixed with slew of tears and blood, a disgusting slurry of suffering. He wanted to be like those white coats, those Followers of the Apocalypse who helped him, he wanted to be able to heal himself and others of whatever wounds the wastes had caused.

And then go kill what caused it.

Judging by the display in front of him, it seemed as though this tribes' leader operated by a similar set of principles.

Bodies.

Hundreds of human bodies, stacked and strewn about one another in a horrid macabre heap. Many corpse lie with their necks bent at odd angles and limbs twisted about. Some of the bodies were slightly swollen, dark veins and black arteries showing in great contrast against their reddened flesh.

Standing tall in the middle of it all was a man, lengthy blonde hair still carrying the luster of youth. He stood half a head taller than the sixth courier, with a slim, muscled build typical of a lifelong swimmer. He wore ragged woolen pants held up by a dark blue sash and the tattered remnants of an open chest judogi, allowing the numerous scars along his chest and sides to breath in the cool evening air. It also revealed a handicap. From his left elbow down there was nothing, a blunt nub marking the end of his left arm and leaving the rolled up sleeve of his gi empty.

In front of the man was a small group of raiders, survivors of the massacre that had taken place an hour earlier, all of whom eyed the blonde man with cautious eyes. Many held their blades in tight two-handed grips to attempt to hide their fear, but the visible shaking of weapons in their hands and wet spots on their cloth pants gave them away.

"What is wrong?" The young man asked spreading his arms wide as if to receive an embrace. "You were all so anxious to separate my throat from my neck a moment ago, what happened to all that zeal?" His voice was a contradiction in of itself. Smooth and light, but still holding the deep, gravely tone that came with masculinity. "What a waste of time."

"I agree with that sentiment absolutely you Fascist Imperial pig."

From within the group of bandits came forth short man wearing obscene amounts of frivolous jewelry and dressed in loose silk robes that unfortunately did nothing to hide his generous paunch. He had a face like a stuffed pig; swollen fat lips framed by bloated jowls, sagging beneath their own weight. His beady, sunken in eyes glared forward as if he was blind to the still bodies surrounding him and the most likely cause of the massacre standing directly in front of him. This ugly mug rested atop the obtuse form of his rotund body that somehow mustered the muscle amongst all the fat, to swing his arm forward, numerous rings of gold and silver decorating the sausage links he called fingers. One of these links pointed towards the blonde accusingly.

He really was fat.

"I wake up one morning and out of the non-existent blue my father tells me that it is well past the time for my first conquest and that I need to change my status of being a fief less disappointment. So after a weeks' worth of travel in the heat, braving the pale sand, the danger beasts, and losing several of my guard to a pack of prowling marilith, I make a discovery. I learn that the tribe that is hosting me, the tribe that is supposed to have accommodations worthy of Sabim, the eldest son of Sabal, more importantly the tribe that is supposed to have a competent militia capable of the simple takeover of some useless backwater tribe, is ACTUALLY a useless backwater tribe itself!"

The men at his burgeoning flanks looked at him with cross stares, averting their eyes when he returned it sevenfold. "What's with the looks? You know it's true, you useless hicks! Now, how about you make yourselves useful and get this boot scum out of my sight."

The raiders scowled, but did as they were commanded. It was demeaning to obey this spherical son of a whore, but they couldn't allow their pride to better of them, lest they forget that the whore in question had sired the fat bastard with a tyrant; disobeying or allowing any harm to come to their V.I.P would bring dire consequences, to themselves and their tribe as well.

So for now, for the sake of the people back home, their pride would have to suffer.

Several of the men moved forward in a wide semi-circle, approaching the one-armed individual slowly. They were resolute. Someone had to die, and if they did this properly, it wouldn't be them. The hundreds of others around them were a bunch of talentless idiots who had just raised their swords, and ran at the freak, thinking their numbers would be enough. No, they were different. They would win. They would survive.

With that shared thought in mind, the raiders rushed the one-armed man like a bunch of hapless idiots.

Guerra sighed. 'Here we go again.'

The first raider approached from the left, making a wide swing for the blondes' neck. The man stepped forward, ducking the strike and slipping an arm over his attackers' opposite shoulder. He c-stepped the raiders leg and threw him to the ground, quickly following with a heavy to the stomp to the brigands' neck. He spun into an incoming raiders' guard, staunching an over head swing with his close proximity and allowing him to drive his knuckles into mans throat.

He turned from the suffocating raider to face another, running at him with a curved dagger. Not waiting for the man to approach knife range, he thrust out a stiff push kick laying the man out on his back. That same leg rose above his head and descended like a judge's gavel, the heel digging into the man's sternum and caving in his chest. Saving what was left of his momentum he stepped back into a sharp leg sweep taking two raiders approaching him from behind off their feet.

In the blink of an eye he was upright, elbow raised and knee cocked. The raider in his gun sights was folded as the blonde brought his knee and elbow together. A distinct crunch, was the tell tale sound of a spine being broken. Two thumps, two bodies, one dead. The other raider sat up dazed and disoriented, only be greeted with the open palm of the blonde slamming his head back into the sand.

"That guy's pretty good."

It took a fair amount of Guerra's restraint to keep from sheathing Blood Nap in Gray's face. It took an even greater amount of restraint to refrain from throttling the man-boy and removing that damnable smirk off of his face. Either of those reactions would simply confirm that the fifth courier had indeed caught him off guard. If it were anyone else than Gray it would have been entirely unacceptable.

"A little bit flashy for my tastes, but hey-" Gray bumped Guerra's shoulder as he took a place at his back disrupting the modulating field of the sixth's stealth boy. He looked out at the standoff from behind the mud hut concealing the two of them, and whistled lowly at the graveyard in front of him, newly minted with fresh corpses. "What works, works. I'm not one to judge." He rested Duran's unconscious form against the sloped wall.

Guerra disabled his stealth boy and stared at the fifths' passenger. "And who would this be? I thought you stopped playing with toys a long time ago?"

Gray checked Duran over, measuring his pulse and rearranging the bandage around his damaged eye as he atomitized, half empty an stimpack atomitized in his hand. He made several small injections around and in the socket before injecting the rest through the dirty wrappings on his chest. "The world is my toy box, the creatures within my toys to play with and break when I get bored. What fun is there once you've broken every last toy? I found that out the hard way, when the legion first ran back east. I do believe this toy has some hidden value so I'm trying to fix it."

"And what value exactly, do you see in this one?"

"He's a lieutenant. Which means this little, raiding party, is actually supposed to be an organized fighting force. It also means the intel on this one is worth a fair bit more than the others."

"If that is all there was to it, you wouldn't have a reason to be patching him up. Those injuries don't look fatal so why are you even bothering to treat them."

"They might get infected and he'd die."

"What do we usually do after we're done with an interrogation?"

Gray snorted, "This isn't the Mojave, this isn't the Capital Wastes, this isn't the Commonwealth, this isn't San Fran, and this isn't New Orleans. You'll never know if keeping a few extras around is a good idea if you kill everything you come across." Satisfied with Duran's condition he once again hauled the larger man up and over his shoulder.

"So you _have_ been listening to me?"

"Fuck your mouth."

"What does that even…?"

Gray chuckled lowly. "You're a toy too you know? I just haven't managed to figure out how to break you yet. You're a source of endless entertainment."

"I swear if you didn't make the best RadScorpion Soufflé, I'd break your neck."

"You know that's not enough to kill me."

"And not realign your spine afterwards."

"You cold blooded son of a bitch!"

The blonde man stood, taking the limp body with him as he did. As he turned to face the ever arrogant Sabim, the corpse in his hand started moving. The not dead raider struggled, hands reaching up to claw and tug at the fingers that had laid claim to his face. The grip tightened as several bands of lightening rushed its way down the man's arm and into the raiders' skull. The raiders' body writhed and shook for several seconds before the current stopped and the one-armed man released the smoking corpse from his grasp.

The raiders' veins had been scorched, and stood out against the tanned skin like a child's puzzle book maze. His eyeballs had exploded out of their sockets, blood streamed from his nostrils and dark finger shaped indentations made themselves apparent along the corpses' cheeks and temple; the tip of its nose and lips were burned a horrible black. Arcs of electricity still coursed through the body causing random kicks and convulsions post-mortem.

Gray's dead eyes trailed across the twitching body of the raider, and decided to react to the situation with his with his most instinctual, consistent and reliable plan of action for dealing with unknown factors. In a practiced motion, his free arm fell to his side, drawing the Raging Bull in a single smooth motion.

He took aim. There was movement. He twitched.

The 'Raging Bull' bellowed, its report followed almost sync by the roar of its estranged sibling. Gray glanced to his left to see Guerra had mimicked his actions, eye staring down the sights of the 'Big Iron'.

'So he saw it, too huh.'

Guerra's eyes shifted, his arms followed and he fired again.

The blonde man idly turned his head to glance at a single archer a little ways off to his right, his bow drawn tight. The blonde focused on the several lines of red trailing down the archers face, and then to the finer details of his exposed brain matter. The raiders' eyes rolled back into the remains of his head as he fell back onto the sand. 'So that's what they mean when they say, "you've popped his cap off."'

He looked to where the gunshots had sounded off. "Ah Lincoln, I'm glad to see your acquaintance has finally regained consciousness. I'm sorry you had to witness this… mess I've made."

Guerra motioned Gray to follow and walked to the blondes mans' side, eyeing the raider remnants carefully. "Don't worry about it Captain, I've seen and made more than a fair share of 'messes' over the years. That's why I usually have Gray here to clean them up."

Gray slowly approached the Captain's opposite, disregarding the prince and his detail as nuisances. He eyed the blonde with caution and suspicion. "Howdy."

"Umm, yes… howdy, to you too sir. "The blonde replied, slightly confused. What was Howdy supposed to mean? Was it some form of greeting? The hostility was also unexpected.

The raider remnants who had yet to have been toasted hadn't expected anything at all. This was supposed to be an easy smash, grab and fuck whatever was left moving. Not an unwanted strip tease by a guy who apparently gained the ability to shoot lightening out his fingers at the same place he learned to be a one man army. His two little helpers were less consequential, but the black armor and the horrific scars on one of the faces of what were supposed to be teenagers, was extremely harrowing.

"What are you waiting for you cowards?! Kill this scum!"

Still it was better to cut oneself against sharp rocks and possibly come out the other side than to destroy ones' self on an immovable and impossible wall. Right?

One of the raiders, beyond wits end, made this decision for the rest of them, taking his spear in both hands and charging the trio, screaming all the while. He collapsed several steps in, with a pair of nickel and dime sized holes in his chest. The Couriers turned their barrels on the last few remnants before squeezing their triggers again. A moment later and only Sabim was left standing amongst the bodies.

His gaze fixed to the one-armed blonde, his lips quivering into a crazed smile. "So you are the one father had made mention of; One of the so called elite generals of that empire to the north, the "Blue Thunder of Alzaa'ir."

"Captain." The blonde man corrected.

Sabim looked over the blonde mans empty left sleeve. "Though I don't remember him saying anything about this, "unstoppable, impossible to defeat, one man army," being a cripple, nor did I expect the so called one-man army to be reduced to a mere babysitter."

"This 'cripple' can and will break your neck with only his thumb and forefinger."

"Sure you can." Sabim mused as he drew a small case from behind his back. Immediately, Gray and Guerra's Pip-Boys registered a large and malignant source of radiation, their Geiger counter registering 8 rads per second. Guerra's look of alarm was matched by his fellow wastelander.

Sabim pulled from the case an even smaller ring of muddled gray metal. In the ring was a small cut of an onyx gem. "But I am not one to go without some sort of contingency, you see. I have the power! The power that comes from the cursed weapon of the north sands!" Sabim slipped the ring onto his fat index finger while smiling with manic glee, "Even now I can feel the curse of the ring invading my body, poisoning my flesh and blood, but that's alright." He raised the ring wearing hand toward the trio. "Your invasion shall be much more severe." As Sabim took aim, he realized the two strangers were aiming at him as well.

The first shot removed his hand. The second put a crater in his shoulder, and a third destroyed his kneecap. Sabim screamed as he collapsed to the sand, weakly clutching at the stump at his wrist and moaning at the excess of pain spreading all across his body. The now left-handed man looked up to see the blonde Captain, grim-faced as electricity arced furiously across his skin. It began to flow down his arm and coalesce into a ball around his clenched fist. The prince whimpered pitifully.

Guerra decided, now was the time to speak up and rested a cautious hand on the Captain's shoulder. "I'd rather you leave the princess breathing for at least a little bit longer. We're going to need him for some… cross examination."

The Captain grunted, "Don't worry Mr. Courier, this shouldn't kill him… but you never know." A cruel smirk appeared on the blonde mans' face as pulled his hand back.

"Things do happen."

The Captain swung his arm forward, opening his hand as it went. "REPPUKEN!" The ground came alive as a visible wave of electricity rushed across the ground, glassing any particles of sand that were unfortunate enough to be in its path. The kneecapped Sabim could only watch, wait and scream as the wave of energy overtook him.

* * *

Sabim awoke on his back, to the sound of humming and the coppery smell of blood; grains of cool sand cradled his head in their collective embrace. He opened his eyes, only to be greeted with the vast empty ocean of the night sky, littered with glowing white embers. His wrists were bound to his chest and his legs had been uncomfortably restrained, his shins tied to his thighs with old gnarled rope. Even if he could have mustered some sort of strength in his fatigued muscles, his bonds provided him no room to struggle.

" _In the shadow of the valley, I would like to settle down…"_

Tall man-sized pyres of wood, dried cactus and sand brush were spread all around his person, as far as the eye could see in the gloom. Within and against each pyre was … something- a whole bunch of things. Hunched by one the pyres closest to him, was a figure and the apparent source of the humming.

" _Wide open space, wind on my face…"_

The figure was humming AND singing. Sabim heard another noise to his right, a mix of panicked grunts, moans, and… sobbing? "P-Please, I'll talk! I'll talk!" He craned his head and strained his eyes to see some movement beneath the figure.

" _A distant horizon, the moon on the crest…"_

The figure was still singing, his raspy voice deathly low and haunting. The man crouched down to the prone body of what was undoubtedly one of Sabims' borrowed militia men, the glint of a sharp edge catching the light of the stars. He made a slow sweeping motion, and the panicked pleas turned into a sort of gurgling; as if the militia man was drowning on something. The prone militia man thrashed and shook from his position on the ground as the insidious figure sat squat over the convulsing body like a patient vulture, his humming and singing still audible through the stomach-churning sounds of a man in the throes of death.

" _In the shadow of the valley, that I love best…"_

The figure paused as one last choked breath and passed through the militia mans lips, before he fell silent. The figure produced an ugly sound of contentment at the deceased body. There was a small flash of light, too quick to reveal anything, but a rusted hide of dull gray, and great brushstrokes of red. The man was holding something in his hand now.

'What was that strange light? Was it some kind of magic? Where did he conj- what's that sound?'

There was a low noise in the air, a buzzing drone that persisted indefinitely, never changing in its tone or octave. It was like a metallic growl, constantly rattling and yowling in his ear with rancorous and uncaring obstinacy. It was fucking annoying.

And then it was fucking terrifying.

That metallic growl transformed into an ear –splitting roar, its pitched whine cutting through the silence of the night. Like a rabid beast it snarled, spit and snapped, its metal teeth sparking and flashing. A wet sound filled the air, sharp and dense cracks filling interludes. The sound of flesh, flesh being rent and torn apart, piece by piece, tissue by tissue, strand by strand. The beasts' roar muted itself as it feasted on the corpse of the militiaman, subsiding into a low purr, before roaring again. The bipolar beast of metal repeated this cycle of contentment and fury over the course of several minutes leaving Sabim and the few survivors with him to shiver and shake in fear.

Finally the beast stopped, its hunger for flesh satisfied and its thirst for blood slaked. As the adrenaline emptied from his system alongside the other fluids in his bladder, and the last of the horrid metal screeching left his ears, he heard amongst the sorrowed moaning of broken men that eerie singing still. The sound of torn flesh being jostled renewed.

" _You have always waited for me, and you always will be there…"_

The air was filled with the scent of copper and noxious fumes that were foreign to the fat princes' nose.

" _Sage brush and pine, old friends of mine…"_

Sabim saw another flash of light and heard a series of small, sharp snaps. *Click*Click* Cli-phwoosh!*

His eyes cinched shut as he was bombarded with a rush of heat, and manmade light. The putrid smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils and curled his hairs, making him gag in disgust. He slowly opened his eyes and looked towards one of the pyres, the likely cause of the intrusive light and heat. He turned his head to vomit weakly in the sand next to him.

The pyres were also the cause of the smell.

The things he had seen within and resting against the pyres were parts. Parts, being the only term that could loosely define what was left of the men who were supposed to guard him. It was more like masses of dissected flesh that had been cobbled together from the remains of his protective detail. There was a finger here, a foot there, some unidentifiable organ that rested atop the outstretched tongue of a… head; some poor soul who's face had twisted up into an unrecognizable creature of suffering, gouged eyes staring into nothing. It was a terrible red mass of flesh that had been carved from the bodies of humans and shoved on top of a pile of sticks and dried cactus. It was being disposed of.

Standing next to the pyre was the figure, the monster that had done this inhuman act. It was the man-no it was that boy from earlier! One of the two who had stood with the Fascist imperial and had wounded him with those strange sticks that breathed fire. Sabims' eye traced fearfully over the boys illuminated form. The torn heavy trousers, the black second skin covering his torso and arms, and that tarnished armor that segmented and stretched with his every breath. This was no mere child! What was this thing?

Sabim realized with a start that the thing was staring back at him. His wide eyes were locked on to the princes' and his- WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! The 'boys' smile did not end at the corners of his mouth; beneath the cheeks like a normal human. It ran THROUGH his cheeks, the wrinkled and mutilated flesh ending just beneath his ears.

"Well hello there, sleeping ugly." The deathly voice rasped.

Regardless of the circumstance or the fear that was constricting his heart, Sabims' pride would not allow him to be insulted by some mere commoner. "You're one to talk with a face like yours, you demon spawn."

That inhuman smile widened and the thing wearing the guise of a boy inched forward. "Demon spawn, huh? That's a new one."

"I find that hard to believe, spawn."

"So talkative, that's good. I have some questions I need answering, and your men have not been the most cooperative. For your own health you should learn from their mistakes." He motioned to the mangled remains stacked and smashed together in the pyres around him.

Sabims' eyes began to water, and his throat became dry, but his pride would not allow him to falter. "They may have been hicks, but they had enough sense to not provide any information, that would betray my fathers' empire. You're a fool if you think I will be any different." His foolish, foolish pride.

The stranger chuckled lowly and with sinister intention as he raised his right hand. Within its' grasp was some odd contraption shaped like a knife, but its edge was strange. Instead of one fine blade, multiple sharp teeth adorned its edge, all linked together by some sort of thin chain that disappeared back into the base of the blade. The boy flipped some kind of switch and the prince began to tremble as that familiar metallic growl sounded off of the exotic dagger. He realized all too late that the teeth were covered in sticky crimson blood. The boy walked forward and began humming again.

" _A little bit further, I will find my rest…"_

"W-wait a s-second," Sabal started. "What type of information are you looking for exactly?"

But he was ignored. The boy squeezed down on a lever that extended over the handle. The device roared as the many teeth of the blade began to rotate, faster than his eyes could follow and sparking as metal occasionally clashed with other metal. Those unfamiliar fumes filled the air again.

"W-wait! WAIT! WAIT! I'll provide information! I'll talk! I''LL TALK! I'LL TA-AAAAAAAGHHHH!"

" _In the shadow of the valley, that I love best…"_

* * *

 **So there it is... it's done (finally)! Done! It's a done deal! I am aware not much happened this chapter, but I could just sit in hiatus with content that might not be finished until almost next year. It wouldn't be fair to any of you who are still waiting for an update. College starts again in a couple months so I'm going to try and write as much as I can in that time in hopes that I'll have the next chapter out within a reasonable amount of time. I'm sorry for taking so long with this one guys, and I hope you can understand how life, labor, and leisure soak up time. If you saw something with room for improvement and would like to tell me what I could do to make my writing better or if you simply liked any what you read, please leave a review. Thanks for your time and have a good day.**


	5. Sorry

Sorry

Well… shit. It's been a whole year now hasn't it? A whole year since I've updated.

Hmm… I don't know what to say actually. I was thinking about coming on here to say that the story has been put on hiatus, but that would just be a lie. I'm sitting on like 2 ½ chapters that I've dragged out of my soul over the past year, not including 3 new stories in the works.

The real challenge is just saying why it's taken so long to get these chapters out in the first place. It's not like I've lost interest in the story, that's not it at all. I still constantly run scenarios and scenes through my head fleshing them out, and filtering more details through the morass each time I do. I still look through the submitted OC character profiles making sure I've kept the essence of the character in tact while still sticking to my script. I still work on the ever expanding rough draft that is this fic on my spare time or whenever I feel that strong urge.

It's just… the last year has been rough and that urge has evaded me for a while now.

My brother died. I lost my job. I got kicked out the house. _I'm broke as fuck_.

Jesus just looking at the words on the screen makes me want to vomit, it's so pathetic.

But that's good. It's good seeing those words because it means I want to change, it means I need to change.

The old me would have sat on these chapters for another year before even thinking to say anything, or let the people who entertain his filthy, amateur writing know a little bit about what is going on.

New me isn't having it. So here's the deal.

1st: I'm going to keep writing while I get my life together and as long as it seems as though people are still interested in this old concept piece from my high school days, I'll keep posting.

2nd: I'm going to listen to my reviewers more. I looked back through my PMs and I'm just shaking my head at how much I contested people who had something to say; you literally asked for it younger me, come on man you're fucking up!

3rd: The new fics I was sitting on. They are all part of a series that delves more into grimdark tones.

The first is a Tenchi Muyo/Universe AU fic focusing on Tenchi transitioning from boy to man in a universe that doesn't understand the meaning of the word 'wait'.

The second is a Sekirei fic with a largely OOC Minato (Everyone's favorite right?) and a much more monstrous take on the Sekirei's alien nature.

The Third fic is basically How to Train Your Dragon: Toothless has tits. (Calm down, the giant winged salamander isn't a furry, I don't have an FA account… Or do I?)

The Fourth: The most unlikely to ever be posted considering how old and in need of revision it is, is a crossover between Claymore and Madness Combat. More specifically Xionic Madness for those of you who ever watched the whole series on New Grounds or Youtube.

I was curious if you guys would like to see me post them now or when they are a few chapters in? I was torn on which was the better plan of action.

That's all I have to say for now, I literally spent an hour in my underwear struggling to write this down. I hope you guys can understand the delay, those of you who drift to this corner of the internet anyway. I hope to have the next chapter for HTK out by the 4th o' July.

Let's Get this **FUCKING STARTED!**

P.S: Nivlac if you read this you are still the GOAT of violent imagery and nihilistic personalities in fanfiction, and one of my favorite authors.

P.S.S: Update that Naruto/Fallout crossover you nun.


	6. Chapter 5

**Welp seems like I've fucked around and actually updated! I know right? I'm surprised too. So real quick, I just want to say once again that I'm sorry it's taken me a whole year and a month to get this updated, it's just that life sometimes feels the desire to get needy and bitchy and grab you firmly by the balls and yank them off and then cheese grate them into bloody strips of flesh.**.. **It's been rough year.**

 **Speaking of which, I'd like to quickly give a heartfelt thanks to everyone and their well wishes. No lie, it brought a mix of awkward chuckles and tears to my face.**

 **Enough of that sentimental shit. I'm back now and I plan on sticking around a little bit longer this time. This chapter doesn't any real action, but it was somewhat enjoyable focusing more on the dialogue and attempting to maneuver around a certain characters ideologies and motivations. This was a fun exercise in that regard. Anyways, I'll stop holding you guys up and let you get with the whole reading thing. Let's get this started... Right after my extremely belated disclaimers.**

 **Akame Ga Kill was written by Takahiro and illustrated by Tetsuya Tashiro.**

 **Fallout New Vegas was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks**

 **Geese Howard is character from the King of Fighters/ Fatal Fury series.**

 **Any and all characters from their respective series belong to their legal owners. The original characters in this fiction are an intellectual property of mine and thus belong to me.**

* * *

Hard to Kill

Chapter 5: Hard to Kill

xxxxXXxxxx

 _Hail victim, raise your voice,_

 _And curse this mortal chain;_

 _Lay down your tired albatross,_

 _Let Heaven hear your strain._

 _This unrelenting plague unbound,_

 _Your agonizing toll;_

 _Like God himself in parallel,_

 _Delusion takes you hold..._

 _Demon Hunter, Cross to bear_

 _xxxxXXxxxx_

"I am inclined to thank you once again Mr. Pratt. Without your assistance that incident earlier today could have become a much uglier affair."

Guerra waved away the man's gratitude, "Think nothing of it Captain. Not only was it the right thing to do, but several of those bandits attempted to kill me on sight." Guerra's eyes followed ED-E as the hovering drone led a group of laughing children on an endless chase around the village.

"It was no problem at all."

"I must also give my thanks to your friend in the brown. I wish I had soldiers as capable as you two when I still called the Empire home." An odd look formed on the man's face as he looked through one of the ports in the nearby wall, a glow of orange light soaking into the sun-tempered skin of his face. Faint screams echoed through the night, nearly drowned out by the laughter in the background. "Though I have to admit, it is quite disconcerting how… thorough, your friend was with his collection and disposal."

Guerra stared unblinkingly at the burning pyres just outside the orphanage's outskirts, the amber lights reflecting off his glassy pupils. "Grayson's a practiced coroner, mortician and surprisingly enough, quite the accomplished surgeon. It's interesting how those three go hand in hand. He should be finishing his interrogation any minute now."

Not a moment later, the blanket hanging in the adobe doorway was brushed aside as Gray ducked in, caked with dried blood and coated in bits of torn flesh and viscera. Walking in behind him was Duran, the bandages wrapped about his chest having been replaced, and proper gauze adhered to his left eye. A haunted look was present on the lieutenants' face as he followed the boy to the table and sat down in between both the couriers. He refused to look in the direction of the pyres.

Guerra raised his hand and within it appeared a cloth bandana and his vault 13 canteen. "Did you forget your splatter protection or…" Gray took the canteen and bandana, soaking the cloth before wiping his face and hands clear of the red organic material.

He tapped his chest plate. "This is my splatter protection, and my ballistic protection, hyperthermic protection, hypothermic protection, protection against edged weapons, protection against blunt force objects, protection against bullshit, etc."

"Where's your helmet?"

"Someplace close by."

"Your duster?"

"Someplace close by."

Guerra scoffed and the Captain shook his head. They were strange… these two _men_. Men, they insisted they were, even though they looked to be around the same age as some of his oldest charges. Then again, his own situation hardly left room for him to talk. He spoke up.

"I do believe some formal introductions are in order," the man started. "Lincoln and I introduced ourselves to one another a while ago. I have not had the chance to yet exchange names with you sir." He extended his hand and provided a small smile. My name is Geese. I am a Former Captain of the Imperial 4th Army, leader of this village and caretaker of all its inhabitants. It is a pleasure to meet you."

"Village? I had assumed this was just a very large orphanage." Gray took the young man's hand in a firm grip. "The names' Grayson Alvarez, just call me Gray." The two men shook hands. "The pleasure's all mine. Thanks for watching over me while I was out. Guerra tells me he was here for a few days before I came to; how long was I actually unconscious?"

Geese raised a hand to his chin. "'Village' is more a formality than anything, I assure you, and yet it would also be inappropriate to call this place an orphanage, considering we do not receive actual funding Mr. Alvarez, but I acquiesce. You arrived here approximately 2 weeks and 4 days ago. I was just finishing the cast for another hut when all of a sudden you just… appeared, right outside my dwelling." Geese closed his eyes in thought. "Your armor and attire was out of this world and left quite a lot of room for suspicion and caution. Then one of the boys figured out how to remove your helmet and well… no offense Grayson, but your face could give nightmares to the Devil."

Gray nodded, "None taken. Most people would've run."

"Yes, well most of the boys did, with the exception of a few."

Gray arced a brow. "Does one of those few happen to be a one-armed illiterate?"

Geese met the arc with a disapproving crease in his forehead. "That would be Havok, yes. He is not illiterate, just quiet and very observant. I had gone to retrieve some medicinal herbs and water, with plans to move you out the heat once I was sure you were stable. I come back to find he already had you out the sun and in his hut; I do not know how he worked up the strength to do such a thing, you must weigh well over 200 pounds."

"165 pounds, 11.7 stone, 74 kilos to be exact, not including an extra 250 pounds in gear; At least, that's what I usually weigh. The kid has heart and a strong grip."

"That he does. Speaking of grip." Geese turned to Duran, the crease on his forehead deepening. "I have been told that you took some liberties with more than a few of my older charges. Care to explain to me why several of my boys can now only match a high five with a high four?"

Duran sat silent, finding great interest in tracing the grooves and indentations of the old wooden table.

"Do I need to ask Mr. Alvarez here to take you for a quick walk so he can help you get the lead off your chest and into your skull?" Geese's voice was calm and low, almost like a tutor admonishing a child.

"I was under orders."

"Orders to maim children." Rather maybe, it was more akin to a judge delivering his sentence.

"No."

"Orders to scar the minds of innocent youth?" The taste and smell of ozone began to permeate the room and a buzzing sensation began to irritate the back the of Couriers' throats.

"No!"

"Orders to permanently impair and cripple several already disadvantaged orphans?" Guerra finally acknowledged the developing irregularities as the visual feed from his prosthetic eyes began to crackle and fizzle at the edges. He glanced at his partner to see the 5th Courier discreetly tracing the dulled edges and aged engravings of a recently reacquired 'Light Shining in Darkness'. His thumb played gently over the safety.

"NO!"

"Then tell me why?" Geese voice became sharp as his frustration and anger began to mutate his features. "Why in the FUCK, did you come into our shitty little hovel and start butchering the last few lights in _**MY**_ life? _**MY**_ KIDS! WHY DID YOU DO IT?" Geese demanded.

"BECAUSE MY OWN LIGHTS WERE AT RISK YOU SHORT-SIGHTED FUCK!" Duran stood up as he roared back into Geese's face narrowing his eyes at the blonde man. "They were at risk of being snuffed out…" Duran fell back into his seat, a look of exhaustion dominating his features. "And after this failure, there's no doubt they will be."

The steady crackle of static in the air slowly subsided as Geese's scowl slowly unfurled itself into a simple look of impassiveness. He sat down and crossed his arm over his chest. "Explain."

Duran leaned back in his chair, looking decades older than a man about to enter his prime. "Just know I didn't want to do it; I…I didn't want to…to hurt them Ok! A majority of my men had no mind of what exactly we were going to be doing here and a lesser majority wanted any part of what today's was. It's just… Sabal doesn't accept failure and to explain anymore there must be context, and this context has quite the back story."

Gray leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and propping his chin up on his palms. "Go ahead Cyclops, I like stories and besides-"

Guerra fiddled with his helmet, before setting it back down on the table. "We've got time."

Duran sighed. "Seven years ago the desert received some visitors from up north, specifically the northeast. 100,000 men all dressed in deceptively staunch white, and bearing the imperial cross. An …expeditionary force as they are so called. They entered the desert with a shout. Not even a week after they crested the first dune did they take the opportunity to raze a village and kill its inhabitants, leaving no survivors. Then they did it again, and again, and again, leaving burning villages and spread-eagled corpses in their wake. I would like to say that they did it with the intent of figuring out where a capital was or where some form of leadership resided, but they started in the northeastern sands, just on the edge of the 'Marque Plateau'; There is no leadership, every tribe is their own sovereign nation so to speak. Considering how they continued to roam for a good couple of months searching for something that didn't exist I'm guessing someone didn't tell them or they didn't believe their sources."

Duran finally looked out at the burning pyres, his features slackening. "Within the span of those terrible months, those beasts terrorized the north sands and its people, none of whom had the capability or know how to fight against their lead and copper spitting contraptions or how to compete against such great numbers. The expeditionary force was unstoppable, trampling over everything in their path. At least until the Empire ventured too far south and tried to burn a settlement under the protection of Sabal. Four months and a few pivotal battles later and the expeditionary force were retreating back to the north, surrounded and furrowed through the hell of the pale sands until the last breathing imperial passed back over edge of the Marque and back into Imperial territory. As it were, they got Sabals' sour old unification juices flowing again and re-ignited his old desire for the union of all tribes within Southwestern territory. Thus here we are today… on the very edge of South Western Territory, with a dissected spawn of Sabal, and no one to blame except the village militia that couldn't keep his fat rear alive. Did I mention that Sabal doesn't take well to failure?"

Gray spoke up, "This Sabal character you've been on about. His name holds some weight in these parts right? Every other sentence that came out that prime Brahmins mouth was, "I am Sabal's firstborn," and he said with such conviction that I'm sure that he actually believed it would protect him from a carving. Personally, I found it amusing to be threatened with a name, but I'm even more interested in finding out as to why he thought it would drive me off. Who is Sabal?"

Duran looked at the two young men strangely. "You two are definitely not from around here, huh? Sabal was originally a Bedouin merchant, one of the few men who were brave enough, stupid enough or just plain greedy enough to trek from tribe to tribe though the death-sowing expanse that is the pale sands of the south desert.

Through his network, more than 100 separate tribes gained some form of consistent trade, some method of weekly to bi-weekly communication and most importantly, a degree of peace. No tribe attacked one another for fear of Sabal cutting them out of his network, and directing his caravans away from their little piece of desert and thus most avoided conflict. This peace lasted for approximately a decade, and during this time Sabal gathered favor amongst the elders and leaders of the various tribes within his network. He gathered so much in fact, that many tribe leaders gave him their eldest daughters' hand in marriage. For tribes' who leaders did not have a son to inherit their position, this meant that the role of tribe leader was promised to Sabal."

Duran wrinkled his nose. "I've heard from some tribe mothers that at one point Sabal was quite a handsome man compared to the squat, fugly little cymai he is now."

"Cymai?" The Couriers dittoed.

"Desert Dire Rats," Duran answered quickly. "Things the size of a small dog that are as ugly as they are vicious; They're pretty fucking ugly by the way. They are also indiscriminate cradle robbers and help keep the danger beast populations under control."

"Alright I'm getting the picture," Gray drawled. "The guy got a few promises of power and let his greed get the better of him that's nothing new. Different name same story."

"Still," Guerra interjected, "how did that lead to him gaining control over an entire region of the desert."

Duran sighed. "He's a greedy, selfish, depraved individual. His true pleasure is possession. I'm actually sure it's one of the reasons he wanted to unify the desert; all those people, all those things beneath his thumb, forced to submit to his will. He's a bastard, but he's a patient bastard."

Geese raised a hand and waved over the attention of the milky eye. "How did none of the tribes realize just how many marital affairs he was having? Sabal had been doing this for 10+ years by this time right? Surely some inkling of information must have slipped through."

Duran shook his head, "Sabal controlled the flow of _all_ information. He was greedy, not cheap; He paid his caravans well enough that any negative rumors that may or may not have been truths, were silenced long before they could circulate through any one village. One of his many father-in-laws croaked without siring a son, thus leaving him as the new village leader. No one really had the gall to contest his rule considering how much power he held. Almost immediately he began to enact treaties between his new village and others within his network, time passed and tribe elders and leaders died of old age or odd circumstance, allowing his power to grow as villages unknowingly became a part of his budding Empire. Some smaller, but more aware tribes actively sought out the opportunity to join his empire for the promise of protection, free trade, and to avoid being a target in the next phase of his takeover. War."

"War? On what offense?" Guerra questioned.

"This is the fucking desert kid. Madmen don't need a reason." Guerra almost giggled at the raiders' comment.

"Ain't that the truth? Please do continue… _kid_."

Duran looked unnerved for a moment before doing as he was told. "He ended up providing a reason nonetheless. Not a week after he conquered his first tribe, messengers arrived at every last tribe that had come into contact with the 'loyal regional merchant' in the last 20 years, i.e. almost every single tribe in the Southwest. They claimed that the tribes who had yet to accept or denied Sabals' treaties were isolationists, and therefore were threats who actively opposed peace between the tribes. What they didn't include was that all remaining tribes, were either already under his control or were a part of one of his 'peace' treaties."

He took a quick breath. "If you hadn't guessed yet, it was an incredibly short war, it only took a little less than three seasons for any remaining isolationists to curl beneath the combined might of his own forces, the armies provided by his _many_ treaties, and a lack of resources to support their population; a consequence of dependency on Sabal's trade routes. He took control of the Southern deserts in the blink of an eye, and of course as with most power hungry dictators gave himself a grandiose title; The "Warlord King of the Southern Sands".

The blonde ex-imperial raised his hand catching the raiders' attention. "As of current, what is the standing military strength of Sabals' Army?"

"Technically, speaking every male above the age of 16 is a conscript in Sabal's army, but the youngest are more like reserves until they properly finish their training."

An irritated look crossed Geese's face. "I do not care for technicalities, I care for actualities. I asked about your wolves, not their fresh born litter of blind pups. How many killers are on standby, equipped and ready to deploy?"

Duran watched Geese closely, searching for motive. "An _**ex**_ _-_ Imperial Captain huh."

"Dishonorably discharged via backstab, arm rip and stasis teigu. I have the proof of one of those sentences right here," Geese said motioning to his absent arm.

"Alright then, Duran's military force numbers at approximately 800,000. However that is only the force he keeps garrisoned in and around his fortress farther up north where the sand turns to rocky crag. Every individual village has a reserve guard of 10,000 men and a personal town guard of 1,000 militia to defend against any bandits or Risk Species that happen to wander in.

Duran pointed to himself. "The men who participated in the… raid today, made up the entirety of the militia for Al' Maiib, a small village approximately a day and nights worth of a walk north from here. The reserves were called away to assist in Sabal's suicidal conquest of the Northwestern Sands. They won't be back for a long time. They might not come back at all."

"So there is time after all." All of the men looked at the blonde Captain curiously. He looked to be deep in thought, eyes downturned and his fingers pulling at the opaque stubble lining his chin like a neurotic pensioner.

He faced Duran, jaw set and eyes narrowed as if attempting to stare a hole through the raiders' body, "How long does one of these conquests usually take?"

Duran shifted uncomfortably underneath the General's intense gaze, but managed to maintain his composure. "I don't know really, it's kinda hard to judge how long a campaign will take. Sabal finished conquering the Southern Tribes in his network within a year's time of the first takeover, but as it were there were many other tribes outside his network that were largely independent of him. Conquering the rest of the Southwest took around 4 years, due to the nature of the tribe's geological orientation, prowling risk species, inexperienced commanders and coalition between some of the larger 'isolationist' tribes. The Northern Sands are just as vast as the South and its people much more nomadic. It's up in the air how long it could take."

"That is good enough for me."

"What?" Both Couriers inquired, voices laced with disbelief.

"Time. That is enough time for me to scout a new place for me to relocate the children." Geese looked out at the still burning pyres illuminating the outskirts of the village and chasing away the dark of the night. "There will be a response to the blood that has been spilled here today and I know that there is no chance I could protect all of them in the instance of an actual siege. Even with the small numbers I faced today, I was not able to protect them all. If I was able to move them somewhere else, further from here, further from Sabal's reach-"

"Where?" Gray spoke up suddenly, leaning forward in his chair and readjusting his propped up elbows. "Where exactly are you going to go?"

"To the south I suppose. I found several oases shortly after my awakening, all of which were further south. We could settle there."

"It'll be temporary." Duran interjected. "We found out about your "Haven" by way of a Bedouin nomad who had spotted it on his way to our village, after a mild case of heat fever had sent him on an uncharted detour." Durans' eyes studied the individual grains of sand peppering the floor as Geese once again tried to stare a hole through the lieutenants' skull.

He continued nonetheless, "Bedouins are as much scouts as they are traders and merchants. They learn the location of the most fruitful and consistent oasis, and most villages are commonly built around or near them. Nowhere in the south is out of Sabals' Reach. Even if you try to go any farther, you'll eventually run into the Great Mabik Cirque, which cuts off the entirety of the Southern desert from its' Coastal waters."

"Then we will go East!" Geese countered.

Gray spoke up again. "Cyclops, you haven't mentioned the Southeast or the East in general. Why is that?"

Duran dared to meet the dead eyes of the fifth Courier, taking quick risky glances at the nearly vibrating ex-Imperial across the table. "The east is all badlands. The Northeast, A.K.A the Marque Plateau rests on a sloping the ridge of the Mabik Cirque, and is damn near a mountainous region itself. The air is thin and crisp, and though the earth is rich and fertile the mild season brings heavy rain that leeches the soil and causes floods. The biggest issue is the wildlife. Numerous hostile high level risk species inhabit its numerous quarries, crags, and caves, and without some kind of dedicated extermination effort no average human being can survive there."

He took a breath. "The Southeast for whatever reason is home to Ultra- Class danger beasts, and is suspected to be where the marilith make their nests. Did I mention it's purely sand."

Geese did not err. "Then I will go and rip the head off that bastard Sabal! These children are under my protection and I refuse to let harm come to them once more!" He turned to Duran fixing him with that same intense glare from earlier accompanied by an uncharacteristic snarl. "Where is the fortress? Where is it?! Take me there so-"

Gray laughed loudly, cutting off Geese's rebuttal. He laughed and laughed until crocodile tears ran down the channels of his eyes and collected along the ridge of his upper lip. He bent forward in his chair and rested his weight on his knees, shaking the collected liquid onto the floor with every convulsive bark. He slowly composed himself, slapping his knee and sitting up straight. He took a deep breath, before exhaling through his mouth.

Geese did not find anything humorous about the threat of extermination or being forced to abandon the shitty little shanty town he had made into a home for those without. In fact, though his features remained neutral, his clenched fists and narrowed brow betrayed his feelings about being mocked.

Gray took note of Geese's near rabid expression of restrained anger and held it together for roughly five seconds before falling out once again, literally tipping over his chair amongst his fits of laughter.

Geese lost his temper.

"And what do you find so funny Grayson?! The idea of a village being ransacked; the idea of innocent children being butchered and slaughtered like cattle; Is that amusing to you? I have had not had enough time to determine your character for myself, but the image that is forming is not a positive one!"

Gray got up, picking up his chair as he did and plopping himself down, still giddy and chuckling. Guerra signed as he fiddled with his helmet once more.

"Aw man kid, you are hilarious do you know that? Not even that rot faced fuck from the wrangler could tell jokes as good as that one! Goddamn! My stomach hurts!"

Geese knocked over his chair as he rose to his feet, electricity visibly arcing across his body. "A joke?! Is that all this is to you Grayson?! Just some joke?"

Gray's second smile wavered for nary a moment as he stared down the now visibly upset young man, unfazed by the crackling buzz in the air. His stare rapidly progressed into a glare and his eyes turned stone cold.

"The only joke here right now is _you_ Sparky, so how about you turn off the strobe and **sit down**."

Geese was a warrior, a leader, and foremost a soldier; thus cowardice was simply not permitted to be a part of his disposition, and yet there was something different about the teens demeanor. In that moment, despite the mirthful smile and lax posture the Courier was presenting, Geese could only see a face with a voice. It demanded to be obeyed, and had no tolerance for disobedience. This was no boy.

"That's enough Gray," Guerra finally said after several minutes of tense silence. He looked tired.

"Captain, I would like to ask that you take a seat, calm down and forgive Gray for his outburst. We are both here to help out of the kindness in our hearts and to put it simply, a lack of a place to go. So please… calm down and let me explain why everything you've suggested won't work."

After a moment of heated contemplation, Geese gave a disgusted snort and followed the 6th Courier's recommendation.

"You already know now that you cannot run. Sabal would eventually find you again and something similar to today would happen again. The kids as they are now simply wouldn't be able to keep up with your pace, and trying to manage a thousand plus children, all migrating to an undetermined location is just asking for tragedy. Even worse would be the tragedy that would follow if you decided to be stupid and killed yourself on the 800,000+ men you'd have to through on your way there. I have plenty of faith in your ability as a one man army, but an independent combatant's worst enemies are attrition and himself; I am positive you will have to contest with both."

The buzzing drone of ED-E's propulsion system neared and passed followed by laughter and rapid sand padded footsteps.

"What's going to happen when all those kids you supposedly 'cherish' are orphaned a second time, huh? How long will they last before a danger beast comes across a bunch of easy meals? What will happen when Durans' forces find a bunch of unguarded and helpless youth? What were your future plans anyways? To just try and exist until the kids grew up? What about after that? All you'd have then is a bunch of useless uneducated and untrained man children."

Geese kept his face blank, mirroring the Courier's empty features as he delivered a short essay of reasons disputing his irrational agenda.

'Irrational. I am being a little bit rash aren't I? Does that mean he is right? No, it does not. It does not make him wrong either. Shit.'

Geese breathed deep and exhaled low, tossing his hands up in the air, he managed to convert his exhausted respiration into a hollow chuckle. "Then what would you have me do Mr. Pratt, because I am all out of ideals. I have given you my answers to this problem and yet you contest me as though you have a better solution."

'I most definitely do, but you won't like it.' Guerra nodded his head slowly, "You are perceptive Captain, but it is not so accurate to call it a better solution."

"And why would that be pray tell?"

The laughter passed by the window once again, this time followed by the droning hum.

"It is much more appropriate to refer to it as a final option."

The sound of old stereo music in the background was overshadowed by laughter.

"Mr. Pratt what are you suggesting?" Geese questioned, confusion audible in his voice. 'Option? What options remain?'

Guerra directed his attention to the noises just outside the window nearest to him and the small forms casting shadows against the light of the far off pyres.

'Wait. He could not possibly…' The laughter grew louder, and with it the faint crackle of gruesome offerings to a long dead god.

Disappointment crossed the Sixth Couriers' features.

It was in the room now, this thing; roaring in his ears and screaming in an ancient language all too familiar to the young Captain. Confusion turned to Anger.

"You already know Captain…"

It embraced him, cooing seductively in his ear. A tendril of pained realization curled around his throat, cinching tight and depriving him of thought and reason. There was a _blaze_.

"NO! Absolutely NOT! I refuse! I will not let you turn them into weapons! No as long as I draw breath!"

"Then I'll kill you-"

It was an inferno.

"What did you say? WHAT DID YOU SAY?!"

"I said I would kill you if you continue to act like a fresh faced lieutenant who's just finished his officers training. You are of no use to anyone right now; to yourself or your charges. In fact you are more of a liability than anything else."

The laughter had ceased and yet the fires still burned bright. The malevolent presence had gone quiet, but that tightness in and around his neck had only firmed. Geese was still seething, but the Courier had grasped his attention.

"You're currently thinking with your emotions and you know it. I'm sure can recognize that this is not thinking at all. You're acting on reflex and right now regardless of how well intentioned you may be, that is not going to save anyone."

Geese made to reply, but caught himself. 'Lincoln is correct. He is 100% correct.' That recognition is what stung the most.

"How?" Geese questioned.

"Hmm?"

"How would you do it? How would you manage to turn thousands of untrained, uneducated, and innocent children into weapons? I tried once you know, to teach them how to fight. But they lost focus, it was just like a game to them and they eventually became bored. How would you do things differently? How would you make things work?"

"Well, first and foremost they need a reason to fight…"

* * *

xxxxxx

By some miracle they had managed to gather all of the youth of the orphanage just outside its grounds, amidst the ashes of pyres that burned week earlier. It had taken the entirety of the morning and the former half of the afternoon, but they had done it. Though Guerra loathed to admit it, he was in a fair bit over his head. Killing people, fixing people, setting disputes of varying degrees of severity, providing the people of the wastes with new technologies and occasionally going out to take care of some problems the NCR couldn't handle; that was as much as his repertoire allowed him to do with any sort of practiced motion.

Guerra was not a General, nor was he a politician. True he had more than a few years of hands on experience in urban and open warfare and had read plenty of books on old world government and political deception, but he had never exercised his knowledge on a scale like this before. He knew what a person of such standing was supposed to do, but he himself didn't know how to apply it; especially in this particular situation.

6,432. That was the headcount. He had to train, nurture, educate, and summarily _raise_ and eventually command 6,432 spry, energetic, bright-eyed young boys who in spite of the raid that occurred the prior week, did not wake-up and curse the world for all of their shortcomings. That last one was a big issue; less hate would mean a rougher transition into the dark, cruel and ultimately uncaring world of death they would be embracing very soon.

Of course he still had Gray, Geese and a reluctant, but willing Duran to help guide the children down through the Valley of Death, so it wouldn't be completely impossible to make it out the other side. This wasn't a one man job. There would just be a whole lot of blood, sweat, tears, flesh, and unfortunately more than a few small brown bodies that would be left behind.

Dammit.

Guerra sighed.

Now wasn't the time to worry about inevitabilities and their consequences. There were much more pressing matters at hand.

Like how in the fuck was he going to get them to shut up.

Several minutes later and the roar of pitched voices still persisted in his ear. Guerra's brow twitched beneath his helm. He liked to consider himself a patient person and patience was often required when dealing with NCR politicians, or settling disputes without the use of 45-70. But it was particularly hot out today, and his patience was beginning to show signs of heat stroke.

"Gray?"

"On it." The fifth Courier drew the 'Raging Bull' from its' holster and pointed it in the air. He slowly squeezed the trigger.

* * *

xxxxx

"And what exactly are you going to tell them Lincoln? What impossible, masterpiece of a speech are you going to conjure up- what lies will you spin to convince them that _you_ are worth _their_ attention?"

"The truth Geese."

"What?!"

"I will tell them the truth. The raw, unfiltered, cold and unchanging truth of the situation they now face. I will give them their options and then they may decide what they wish to do.

"What if they say no?"

"They won't."

* * *

xxxxxx

"No one loves you."

The silence was deafening as thousands of young pliable minds struggled to comprehend what they had just heard. Guerra could almost hear the dirty stare Geese was directing his way.

"This world of yours has no love for the weak and no tolerance for weakness. You experienced just a breath of the worlds cruelty a week ago, and were it not for several people who were strong, deciding that your lives were worth saving, you would all be dead or worse."

Guerra paused, taking in the varied reactions of the countless faces in front of him. Many were, as expected, crying at the truth of his words, their faces wet and eyes puffy. He was surprised, though ultimately please to see the others staring brazenly at him with largely unconcealed anger, damning him for tearing their fragile veil of ignorance with sheer and jagged reality. One boy with sharp azure eyes was glaring pure hate in his direction and gritting his teeth so hard Guerra could practically hear them grinding against one another. Then there were the quiet ones, the kids who kept their emotions under tight lock & key as they listened to him. They would likely prove to be the most interesting, albeit most complicated.

"Now we find ourselves facing the inevitable consequences of our actions. What happened a week ago will happen again, and the next time, we will not save you. Not because we cannot, but because your lives simply aren't worth saving. You are of no use, even to yourselves."

More tears, more death glares and more inquisitive stares.

"But that can all change."

Every boy adopted a look of confusion at those words.

"I did not have you all gathered here to admonish you about the cards you have been dealt, lest I forget my own upbringing. I am here to give you options. Choices that will decide the course your lives will take."

* * *

xxxxx

"How will you convince them? All of them, I mean. Certain individuals will not take well to your 'truth'. They _are_ children you know."

"I don't have to convince all of them. Just a majority, peer pressure will do the rest. Like you said, they're just children."

* * *

xxxxxx

His name was Sturm. That was not his given name. He was a wolf. A wolf could not be given a name because no one could claim a beast for their own. A wolf belonged only to itself.

These other weaklings who surrounded him were sheep, their only purpose being to entertain him so that the drawl meaningless existence that was his life didn't drive him to insanity. He was a wolf. These people were not his pack. They were a shroud. They were weak. They were helpless pitiful things who spent their days laughing and playing in the heat, cajoling foolishly and needlessly burning valuable calories all for the sake of 'fun'. They let life blow past, unworried about what their future held, not seeking to improve upon themselves in the slightest. Their patron was a saint for taking them in, but a fool for wasting even a second of his time bothering to try and teach them anything beyond how to spell their names; those who had names anyway.

He was a wolf. Not a sheep. He made his own decisions, his own choices. He loathed to ever imagine losing control over his own life; perhaps that is why he had avoided any and all villages beneath that tyrant's thumb.

Perhaps that was the reason why he was feeling such hatred, such spite for this stranger, who had appeared out of thin hot air and now declared that he would be giving him and the rest of these sheep choices to make.

He was not a sheep. He was a wolf. A WOLF! He made his own decisions! His own choices!

The stranger stepped off the wooden podium he had erected a few days prior and walked forward the collection of sheep parting as he walked through their masses. Whether if it were fate, chance or the stranger had planned it from the start, he came to a stop in front of the boy who refused to follow the motions of his peers. The boy glared craters into the dull red fish eyes of the strangers' helm. The stranger looked back in a placid and unconcerned manner and raised his right hand. Sturm flinched at the motion readying himself for the sharp sting of cracked rawhide against his cheek; he would not back down.

As it were, his worry of violence though not unfounded, was needless.

Guerra simply held his right hand aloft, still looking down at the boy who stood in his way. "Everyone present gets two options. These are not your only options, because you as individuals deserve the natural right of freedom and control over all the decisions you have made and will make in your lifetime. These two choices however have been carefully planned with your survival and wellbeing as absolute criteria."

The young wolf grimaced as he took in the curious expressions of the sheep. They had been hooked.

"Your first and to be honest, your easiest, option is to give in." Duran approached Guerra's right drawing concerned murmurs and glances from the boys who recognized the scarred cyclops with the milky eye.

"Duran here has explained his own situation and how he was essentially forced to do what he did. He has offered to take anyone who chooses this option back to his village, from which you would be brought under the protection of Sabal, the King of the Southern Sands."

'That is not an option.' Sturm affirmed to himself.

"You would be doted upon by widowed wives and old soft-hearted fathers, all looking for a new beacon to shine some light on their dreary old lives. You will be fed, you will be loved, you will have comfort, you will have a worthy substitute of a regular family oriented life."

Guerra silently judged the hopeful expressions that had begun to spread throughout the ranks of the children, even giving the heated glares that razed his form a pause from their scrutiny. It was time to crush that hope, tear it apart and scatter it to the winds.

"Until you come of age."

Hope turned to confusion.

"When most of you come of age in about 4 to 6 years, you will be drafted into Sabal's Army and forced to serve for 20 years at a minimum. During this time, you will act as Sabal's hand, spreading death and fear to whatever and whomever is within his reach and replicating events just like the one that happened last week."

He ignored the first sounds of sobs.

"You will be slaves to the nigh unstoppable scourge the rules that currently rules the desert, cogs in the machine that allows this vicious cycle to repeat time and time again. In the eyes of your owner, you'll be just that, gears of war. Not a face, not a name, not even human. You will simply be another statistic, fodder to be looked over, written off and forgotten. That is the future that awaits you with option 1."

Confusion snowballed into despair.

Duran struggled to maintain his aloof façade as the sounds of sobs began to spread. The Courier had not informed him in full of what he would say to the kids in regards to his offer of asylum and gradual assimilation of the orphanage into the populace into several villages under Sabals' control. Though Guerra was not completely wrong in his predictions, it would bring them under the tyrant's protection and thus keep them safe from almost all the deserts' dangers sans an Ultra-Class danger beast.

This, or whatever Guerra had turned his act of attempted kindness into, was nothing close to what he had planned or envisioned. But he couldn't say the Courier was lying.

Guerra looked back down to the boy in front of him, sighing as the azure glare persisted. If he didn't know any better he'd think that the kid had some sort of vendetta against him in particular. Maybe he did, kids were weird.

He lifted his left hand, and Gray walked forward followed closely by Geese. "Now for your second option. The hard option."

Guerras' hands fell to his neck, undoing the clasps and locks of his Elite Riot Helm. He pulled it off, and held it out to his young rival and without missing a beat, the boy slapped the helmet out of the couriers' hand. Ignoring the act of disrespect, he cleared his throat and continued.

"Anyone who accepts who accepts this option will stay here. Over the course of the next 6 years you will be trained, educated, drilled, equipped and by the inevitability of your profession, become practiced wardens of the desert."

"It will be difficult. Your days will no longer be passed with games of tag in the sand, and adventuring through shallow quarries. They will be endured, filled with blood, sweat, tears and heartache. You will be alone, hated and feared by those who stand in the way of whatever objective you wish to achieve. You will have no one to depend on, but yourself and those who stand next to you."

Guerra paused in his monologue taking in the expressions of his crowd. Glares and poorly concealed looks of suspicion had given almost entirely to tears and quivering lips, despair taking a firm hold of their hearts and souls.

'Well would you look at that? Even the tough ones prove themselves to still be children, with one unruly exception. I guess I should give them a little bit of hope back.'

"Until you come of age."

It was almost amusing to see so many faces light up with recognition as he repeated that familiar phrase once more. "In 6 years, when your training is complete you will be men. Men capable of doing whatever you need to do, whenever you want to do it. You will have the power and the training to carry any obstacle that gets in your way. Nothing will be impossible for you to achieve and nothing will be able to stop you. You will be saviors to those without hope, and a scourge in the eyes of those who wish to suppress hope. You will be messengers of death and couriers bearing gifts of life; you will be whatever you choose to be."

Guerra looked over all the boys within his sight, all of the small faces scrunched up in deep thought. It was horribly adorable; so indescribably pleasing and yet heartbreaking to see all those innocent little faces fix themselves with such determination. They had no right to look as dedicated as they did, spurred to ruin themselves and fight for a chance at a future that would hold nothing, but spilled blood and sorrow.

'Shit.'

Guerra raised his hands higher. "Make your decision."

It was slow at first, many of those once determined looks giving way to expected and much more appropriate insecurity. Then one boy, one who hadn't lost that look of unwavering conviction walked forward past his glaring affiliate and stood by Guerra's left arm. He was older than the rest, possibly 14 or 15. His bright cerulean eyes were fierce, but held no real animosity like that of the younger boy in front of him.

"I want to learn," the teen started, his voice feeding through the hidden microphone on Guerra collar and broadcasting though ED-E hovering a few stories above the gather crowd. I want to learn how, to be strong so I can prevent this-", he held up his hands, both missing thumbs and pinky fingers,"-from happening to anyone else."

He looked over to Geese, "I also want to stay with Mister Geese, just a little longer."

The former Captain looked as though he had swallowed a whole lemon. "I told you about calling me 'Mister', Ike."

"Ah! Sorry Mister Geese!" The boy quickly apologized, running a hand nervously through his messy mop of pale brown hair.

Another, slightly younger boy, walked forward oozing with hostile intent. He took a spot next to Ike, and kept his head down. "I'm tired of being weak. The weak can only receive and I have received nothing but pain." The boy lifted his head, black bangs parting, his left eye had been gouged, and a forced smile extended from the corner of his mouth to the middle of his left cheek and a deep scar lined his throat. "I'm ready to give back."

Ike wrapped an arm around the boys shoulder and jostled him slightly. "Ever the cynic eh, Dyre."

The black haired boy's ruddy hazel eye glared at the smiling teen, but did not pull away. "Your optimism exhausts me. Do you even know what a cynic is."

Just like that, with the first of their number having made a decision, the rest followed in quick order gathering alongside and around their patrons. None entertained the option of going with Duran. 6,000 of the young wolfs' peers now stood with the person he summarily hated, all based on the premise of a promise. Promises were fickle things that existed only to be broken, so why should he set himself up for disappointment. No, he was a wolf! A wolf made its own decisions, lived by its own rules, did what-

"Sturm…"

The boys steady downwards spiral was halted, caught within the saftey netting of a voice. He looked over to see, amidst the many faces staring at him with some form of contempt for being different, there was one that was only filled with concern.

Havok.

Like many of the rest, his torso was bare; unlike the rest however he was missing an arm. Massive scarring decorated the left half of his torso, claws of discolored flesh reaching over to their opposite flanks. He reached out his left arm, fingers curling lightly.

"Brother… come…"

Oh.

Right.

How could he forget. A wolf is strongest with its' pack.

And so the angry youth took the hand of his sibling, and surrendered his life to the machinations of mad men with good intentions.

* * *

xxxxx

Geese sat silent. He looked tired. Defeated almost. For a long while he just sat there, eyes downturned and soul trodden contemplating the grim scenario promised to his charges. He looked at the sixth Courier with a frown.

"You have done this before, have you not?" The Captain accused.

Guerra gave a noncommittal shrug. "I don't know, maybe once or twice."

Geese laughed at that, loudly and with an earnest amusement.

"You are a disturbed individual aren't you Mr. Pratt? I can only imagine that the same goes for you as well Mr. Alvarez?"

Gray laughed with the Captain in his broken musings. "Don't you know it _hombre_? _Estoy literalmente jodido en la cabeza_!"

Duran awkwardly shifted in his chair as the two men painfully relieved the violent tension of room and replaced it with something else. There was something in the air that disturbed the raider Lieutenant just as much, if not to a greater extent than before.

"Alright Mr. Pratt, you have my reluctant blessings and support in delivering your suicidal propaganda to the boys. Just answer this one last question. What is your end goal and how does it involve the youth?"

Guerra shifted slightly, and looked up at the shallow roof of the mud hut as he thought of an answer that would sufficiently satisfy the patron. "You know Captain, I have lived a long time, but it was fairly early on when I learned that the roads we walk often affect things beyond our sight and almost always beyond our control; the end only comes with death. Conveniently the solution for that little existential nightmare is also the answer to your second question. _Amigo_ , unfortunately I plan to remake them in my own shape."

Guerra smiled.

"Fortunately, they'll be rather hard to kill."

* * *

 **And were done! It's a done deal! Yep... Mhmmm… I don't know what to say right now, besides the usual... Oh right! I have a couple of other fics in the works that have been taking up my spare time and I feel a little bit invested in. This fic of course will still hold most if of attention, considering I've been working on this since High School, but these side projects are a nice distraction when I get burnt out on writing for H.t.K. The only question is if I should post these fics now, or try to get them somewhere close to completion before I do? On one hand, I'll be posting a mostly incomplete piece of content that is basically just a foundation with a blueprint, on the other hand I get to gauge if people would even be interested in the fic itself.**

 **So...**

 **I'd like to ask you guys what you think? The consumer is always right, or so the saying goes. I have a poll up on the profile and it'll be open until the New Year. Please do go take a gander, I have it set up so you can tell me what fic idea you like the most and how you would like me to post the fics. Anyway if you saw something with room for improvement and would like to make suggestions on what I could do to make it better, or if you simply enjoyed what you read please do leave review, it really helps to motivate and validate. Thanks for your time and have a good day.**


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